A New Partner in PD&R

A New Partner in PD&R

Lynn Ross, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Development. As the newest member of the Office of Policy Development and Research’s leadership team, I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself to The Edge community. It was just seven short weeks ago that I was simply a consumer of the many research and data products of PD&R, so it is a thrill to now be a contributor in my new role leading PD&R’s Office of Policy Development as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy Development.

I am honored to take on this role and have done so at a particularly exciting time for both HUD and PD&R. As you may have read in recent editions of The Edge, we have a new Assistant Secretary in Katherine O’Regan. PD&R is the midst of our largest hiring effort in four years. We’re expanding the methods we use to reach you with the latest information by offering three new mobile apps and an expanding collection of e-books. Through programs like the Research Partnerships Initiative, we’re creating more flexible opportunities for partnerships that produce research aligned with PD&R priorities.

In my short time on the job, I have been amazed at the breadth and depth of the work we do here and have also found that I feel right at home. I come to HUD and to this role with experience wearing many hats: planner, houser, researcher, communicator. Most recently, I led the ULI Terwilliger Center for Housing where I worked on a range of issues including exploring the role of demographic change in shaping communities and understanding the drivers of cost for affordable rental housing. At the National Housing Conference and Center for Housing Policy, I worked to shed light on the full spectrum of state and local housing policy tools. At the American Planning Association, my work covered everything from brownfields redevelopment to zoning for more housing choice and opportunity.

While I’ve spent my career working for national organizations, my work has always focused primarily on stakeholders at the local level. In fact, I’ve travelled to almost every state in the U.S. throughout my career. And it is through working with these local stakeholders that I have developed a true appreciation for having access to just the kind of work we undertake here in PD&R. I’ve also learned that decision-makers at all levels of practice need this information communicated in a meaningful way that supports more informed, real-time decisions about the communities they lead.

My passion for improving the lives of people by making better places developed long before I ever set foot in planning school. I grew up outside of Chicago in a city called Joliet. On school breaks, my parents, fellow lovers of urban places, would very often take me into Chicago by train on a route that passed the former Robert Taylor Homes public housing development. While that site is now home to a new mixed-income neighborhood thanks to the HOPE VI program, the questions I used to ask as we passed by remain and, in fact, still inform the work that I do today: Is that the best we can do? How can we make these homes better for the people that live there? How can we connect this place to the larger community in a meaningful way?

Guess who else asks these questions and many more? The smart, talented team of social scientist, program managers, researchers, planners, economists, engineers, architects, statisticians, policy experts, and others that comprise the PD&R staff. The PD&R team, along with others at HUD and across the federal government, is hard at work on an incredible array of efforts in service of our mission to “inform policy development and implementation to improve life in American communities.” Our work is informed daily by the Research Roadmap, which identifies critical policy questions to help direct PD&R research and demonstration investments over a five-year period. One of my major priorities will be to develop and implement a process for creating the next version of this critical guiding document. I will also focus on ensuring that our publications, web and social media presence, and events are shared with you in ways that are accessible, interactive, and useful.

If you haven’t done so recently, I hope that you will spend some time on HUD USER exploring our work. I also hope that you will engage with us about the issues you are facing in the field, how our resources make a difference in your work, and what more you need. Finally, I hope that you will view me, as well as my colleagues at PD&R, as I view you…as a partner in policy and in practice.