Cisneros

Washington -- THE SIXTH-grade teacher told her class that the best writing often takes in four major spheres of life: religion, royalty, mystery and sex. She asked her pupils to write essays that used all those elements.Freddie finished first. He wrote: " 'Good God,' said the Queen. 'Pregnant again? I wonder who did it?' "It could be said that President Clinton covered three of the four spheres when his attorneys went to court to argue that the Constitution protects him from being sued for damages while in office.

WASHINGTON -- There comes a time when a city has to play hardball to protect its political interests. No more hand-holding. No more sweet-talking. No more kidding around.There comes a time when a city has only one choice: Bring out the go-go boots and the marching band.That's exactly what Baltimore did yesterday. Baton twirlers and high-steppers jumped and gyrated in front of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in a high-decibel effort to win a $100 million federal grant for an empowerment-zone project.

WASHINGTON -- In a major rethinking of public housing that is sure to reignite passions over integration, U.S. housing secretary Henry Cisneros yesterday released a plan to demolish urban high-rise projects and disperse their tenants to middle-class neighborhoods.Outlined in a scathing report called "The Transformation of HUD" that Mr. Cisneros sent to Congress, the public-housing plan is a key element of a broad streamlining effort. Congress would have to approve significant changes from current policy, but early reaction was positive.

On a bumpy ride through the back streets of Baltimore, U.S. Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros got a close look yesterday at the city's unvarnished side, the mostly poor and decaying neighborhoods beyond the downtown business district.Amid the boarded-up rowhouses and overgrown lots, he also glimpsed the redevelopment that the Schmoke administration wants to hasten with an "empowerment zone" designation that could bring as much as $100 million in new federal aid.Maryland Democratic Sens.

Atlanta -- Empowerment zones, crime and gun control, homeless initiatives, tax credits for the working poor -- are they adding up to something? Does the Clinton administration have a set of pro-city policies which, by any other name, would be known as a national urban policy?Henry Cisneros, the Housing and Urban Development secretary, claims it's so. The comprehensive set of urban initiatives that city leaders have long sought is finally taking shape, he argues.On the law-and-order front, Mr. Cisneros himself took part in a drug raid recently in a Boston public housing project.

Attorney General Janet Reno and U.S. Housing Secretary Henry G. Cisneros talked about sowing the seeds to rebuild the nation's blighted inner-city neighborhoods yesterday as they stopped to admire a flower garden that was once a vacant lot in West Baltimore.On a tour capped by a visit to one of the city's worst public housing projects, the national leaders shook hands with residents, inspected new homes, walked past horse-drawn fruit carts and said they'd found a national model for urban renewal.

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.

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.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry G. Cisneros 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 U.S. cities -- have failed to spend federal money on projects to rejuvenate urban areas.

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.