HUD chief reveals plan to use pension funds in a new housing program - Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros

Jet, July 5, 1993

A housing program that will be the first to draw on a major pension fund is good news to Black mayors who were in attendance at the U.S. Conference of Mayors during a recent meeting in New York City, where Mayor David Dinkins hosted the conference.

The housing program was announced by Henry Cisneros, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, during his address. He was joined in the announcement by Steven Coyle, a senior AFL-CIO official. They jointly unveiled a plan to invest $660 million of the labor group's pension funds in a five-year program to build housing and job-creating commercial projects in 30 of the nation's largest cities.

Cisneros and Coyle said the AFL-CIO's commitment would be supplemented by another $550 million from public and private sources with the overall investment to be secured and protected by the Federal National Mortgage Association and two government agencies.

The HUD official said it was hoped that the plan would encourage investment by the country's other pension funds, which he said total $4 trillion, a third of the nation's financial assets. The AFL-CIO's pension fund alone totals $600 billion.

Previously, the funds have not been invested because of fear of excessive risk to the pension money of millions of American workers.