Maxine Waters Receives NACEDA Award

Posted under Industry News on April 3, 2009

WASHINGTON—Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles) received the NACEDA Stephanie Tubbs Jones Legislator Award for her contributions to community development and community economic development at this year’s Third Annual NACEDA Summit.

The award was presented to Waters at the conclusion of the second day of the three-day NACEDA Summit attended by community leaders from 26 states and 8 metropolitan areas, and hosted featured presenters including Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Secy. Tom Vilsack of the Department of Agriculture, and Xavier de Souza Briggs, the Associate Director of Housing at the Office of Management and Budget and a member of the Obama transition team.

In accepting her award, Waters showed support to loan modification and refinance initiatives as reflected in President Obama’s Making Home Affordable program, in conjunction with the administration’s Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan.

“This crisis that we have with housing is perhaps one of the worst this country has seen and weve got to solve it for so many reasons—not only to keep people in their homes, but to also help us get out of this mess by supporting loan modifications, utilizing the stabilization program to rehab properties and get them back in the market, and helping to avoid this ever happening again,” Waters said in her remarks.

“The president’s plan is one that, we hope, will really get to the heart of the problem.”

Waters also honored the awards namesake, the late Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the Ohio Democrat and affordable-housing advocate who died in August 2008:

“She was a very bright, intelligent, competent woman, who worked very hard for her neighborhoods and who worked very hard for poor people, working people, and basically people who need representatives in Washington,” Waters said, recalling campaigning in Ohio, and seeing some of the hardest-hit areas from the foreclosure crisis first hand.

“Before we understood what the subprime meltdown was all about, she brought me to a community meeting about all these boarded up houses. That meeting was the first meeting that brought me in contact with what was going on with foreclosures of this magnitude,” Waters said.

Waters’ remarks followed presentations by Michael Rubinger, President and CEO of Local Initiatives Support Corporation, and Kenneth D. Wade, Chief Executive Officer of NeighborWorks America.

Caption: U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and National Housing Institute’s Harold Simon