President Trump Nominates HUD Personnel

The White House recently announced that President Trump intends to nominate Pamela Patenaude to serve as Deputy Secretary for Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Neal Rackleff of Texas to be an Assistant Secretary of HUD, Community Planning and Development.

Patenaude is currently president of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for America’s Families, an organization that seeks to elevate housing’s place on the political agenda. Patenaude has held a variety of housing policy positions in both the public and private sectors. She served as HUD Deputy Secretary for Community Planning and Development under President George W. Bush and as HUD’s White House liaison under President Reagan. She also previously administered the Section 8 program for the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority. Before joining the Terwilliger Foundation, Patenaude was Director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Housing Commission. She has also served as executive vice president of the Urban Land Institute.

Rackleff has served as the director of Houston’s Housing and Community Development Department. According to a White House announcement, during his tenure Houston became the first major city to effectively end veteran homelessness while chronic homelessness declined more than 70 percent. During that time, key revitalization projects led by Mr. Rackleff include developing a grocery store in a food desert and the historic preservation and conversion of a blighted office building into the new JW Marriott Houston Downtown hotel. Mr. Rackleff is a partner at Locke Lord law firm where he focuses on community and economic development, affordable housing, and inner-city revitalization.