Cisneros

Washington.--Secretary Henry Cisneros hopes he's created a vision, a blueprint of a Department of Housing and Urban Development that's worth having.Mr. Cisneros didn't have much choice. Even friends of cities and low-income housing have questioned the effectiveness of the bureaucracy and red-tape-ridden department. The Republican sweep of Congress immediately raised prospects of placing HUD on the butcher block. Then President Clinton, also having read the election results, said: Justify HUD's existence or I'll recommend elimination.

WASHINGTON -- Henry Cisneros, the new, activist secretary of Housing and Urban Development, says he favors rent controls on subsidized housing, a speed-up in the sale of abandoned single-family homes to poor families and free space for Scout groups in the gang-infested housing projects of the nation's cities.All this and more, he told reporters yesterday, will be required to relieve the squalor of urban areas and rebuild their economies with federal and local resources.At the same time, Mr. Cisneros said, he will struggle with the exploding cost of previous mismanagement at the scandal-ridden Department of Housing and Urban Development.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration is attempting to solve a looming $18 billion financial crisis involving federal rent subsidies on low-income apartments, but the proposed fix might end up costing taxpayers several billion dollars, federal officials said yesterday.Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros acknowledged for the first time yesterday that owners of nearly 1 million low-income housing units could default on $18 billion worth of federally backed mortgages if the government does not increase already inflated subsidies on those units or take other steps to address their problems.

U.S. Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros made an unannounced visit to one of Baltimore's worst public housing projects yesterday and ordered immediate federal assistance to restore its blighted high-rises.On his first trip to a U.S. city since taking over the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Mr. Cisneros arrived at Lexington Terrace in West Baltimore after walking through the rejuvenated Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood.His mood turned somber as he dodged puddles of water in the leaky, trashy stairwells of a high-rise at 734 W. Fayette St. and walked through hallways reeking of urine.

WASHINGTON -- On a blazing hot day in the spring of 1984, Henry Cisneros, then the 36-year-old mayor of San Antonio, took Democratic presidential aspirant Walter Mondale on a tour through a working-class Mexican-American neighborhood in West San Antonio.With the Texas presidential caucuses coming up, Mr. Mondale needed the votes. But the neighborhood tour was not something anyone was looking forward to.Lo and behold, a working-class Hispanic neighborhood in San Antonio turned out to mean pleasant, mesquite-shaded streets lined with pretty bungalows, many with comfortable porches and flower gardens.

WASHINGTON -- Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros held a town meeting in the shady courtyard of a public housing development here yesterday to promote congressional reforms that include rent ceilings to encourage employment for public housing tenants and a proposed $265 million anti-crime program.Mr. Cisneros, with rolled-up sleeves and a wireless microphone, moderated the 1 1/2 -hour meeting with 11 HUD tenants and their children drawn from Baltimore and other major U.S. cities.

WASHINGTON -- Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros -- one of President Clinton's closest advisers, whose tenure was clouded by a messy personal life -- announced his departure from the administration yesterday.Cisneros became the seventh member of the 14-person Clinton Cabinet to announce plans not to return for the president's second term.In a one-page letter to Clinton, Cisneros, a 49-year-old former mayor of San Antonio, gave no reason for his departure, which had been expected. He said only that he had "concluded that I cannot ask to be considered for service in the next four years."

WASHINGTON -- A decade ago, he was hailed as the perfect politician for the '80s -- an energetic, young Latino with Harvard credentials, populist appeal and movie-idol looks. His future was never in doubt. He would be mayor, senator, vice president and -- maybe, in time -- president of the United States.But Henry G. Cisneros -- now designated to be secretary of Housing and Urban Development -- has never gotten further in elected office than his four terms as mayor of San Antonio.As it turned out, the rising star of the '80s was sidetracked by what will surely go down in history as the political plague of that decade: An embarrassing, highly publicized extramarital affair.

IT'S POPULAR these days to complain about the independent counsel law and how Attorney General Janet Reno has chosen to interpret it.She's too slow to trigger the statute, some complain. Others suggest the probes themselves are too long, too expensive and don't come up with much.Those critics may all be correct. But last week's indictment of former Housing Secretary Henry Cisnernos makes another case: that the independent counsel law sometimes functions exactly as its authors intended, creating a vehicle for the investigation of possible wrongdoing in high places as untainted by politics as possible.

Henry G. Cisneros, the U.S. secretary of housing and urban development, said yesterday that he is working with Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to see that Baltimore spends millions of dollars that have been earmarked for its revitalization projects.Mr. Cisneros, addressing a two-day HUD community development forum at the Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore, said he is concerned and "not satisfied" with the way housing officials in Baltimore and other cities have failed to spend federal money on projects to rejuvenate urban areas.