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Secretary of Housing and Urban DevelopmentJulián Castro is on the short list of vice presidential candidates for Hillary Clinton. He's a 41-year-veteran from San Antonio,Texas, and while he doesn't speak fluent Spanish, or he can now boast two years of executive experience at HUD. The major new initiative he's championed is the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program,which is meant to repair the nation's public housing units at a time when there is little chance of increasing funding for public housing in Congress. Rolled out in 2012 before Castro was secretary, RAD was a pilot initiative to sell public housing units to private developers to repair and maintain for 15 to 20 year renewable contracts. Castro has since tripled the number of units included in the pilot to 185000 nation wide, and 15 percent of the public housing stock.approximately 4000of those units are in Baltimore. In 2014,the city's housing authority sold 22 buildings, or 40 percent of the city's public housing stock, and to private developers,and repair work has begun. The Takeaway talks with Jessica Lewis, an an organizer with proper to Housing Alliance, or and Paul Graziano,commissioner of housing for the city of Baltimore and executive director of the Housing Authority of Baltimore City.
Source: wnyc.org