Housing Sec. Andrew Cuomo has urged the building and development community to return to the cities and first-tier suburbs they abandoned long ago.

"You've run to the edge of the envelop; you can't run any further", Sec. Cuomo told the Urban Land Institute's recent meeting in Washington. You have to turn and face one another.

ULI is a non-profit education and research institute that studies land use and real estate policy and practice. It's 15,000 members represent more than 26 disciplines in the public and private sectors, including builders, planners, academics and lenders.

The HUD secretary said that a whole raft of cities have been by-passed during the economic expansion, and called on builders and developers to return them to the same prosperity that many of their larger sisters are now enjoying.

There is work to do, he said. There are places that need help; it s the right thing to do and the smart thing. If we raise them up, it will lift us all.

Numerous medium-sized cities, cities in the Northeast and one-industry towns are still struggling, Cuomo said, noting that one in six have unemployment rates than are 50 percent higher than the national average and one in three are at crisis poverty levels.

We shouldn't develop the suburbs at the expense of the city, he said. They re not independent; they re interdependent, and the problems don t stop at the city line.

Cuomo also said the inner ring of neighborhoods around many urban cores are suffering from an identify crisis. Since they are labeled suburbs, it s assumed they are strong and well, he explained. But they are more like the urban areas they surround, and they re caught in the middle. They don t have the same culture as the cities and they can t sell the newness of exurbia.

To help builders, the secretary, repeating a familiar theme that the private sector is a partner, not an enemy, pledged not to work against them. The government must work with the private market, he said. We can t substitute for the private sector, it will only make a bad situation worse.

Toward that end, he said will drop the requirement that individual jurisdictions must file development plans with his agency. Instead, HUD will accept regional plans, and offer incentives to localities which join regional planning authorities.

During a panel session on redeveloping first-ring suburbs, meanwhile, Judy Rawson, a Shaker Heights, Ohio council woman, said that because restoring the nation's earliest suburbs usually means higher taxes for their residents, local officials must find ways to convince the populace that what they have in mind will improve the quality of their lives.

"People who live in developed communities hate change; they're world class NIMBYs," she said. "And they don't have a lot of blind faith in either the government or developers."

A Cleveland suburb, Shaker Heights currently has a wide range of residents, the council woman said, everything from families of welfare to high-paid CEOs of major corporations. And because it is fully developed, it has an eroding tax base.

At the same time, though, the city's schools are ranked No. 1 in the state and among the top 5 percent in the country, and people who live there "have remarkably similar values." Indeed, in a recent survey, 37 percent of the residents said they like the town's atmosphere.

To gain their support for revitalization, Rawson suggested that officials stop yammering about suburban sprawl and start searching for a more balanced approach. "You get nowhere criticizing suburban sprawl," she said. "The response in my town has been, 'Stop your whining'."

She also urged developers to not just talk about what they intend to do but to show people what the finished product will look like. "Words are not enough," she said.

"Words confuse. You need pictures. When we show people what (redevelopment) will look like, it raises the excitement level. They urge us to get going."

Published: November 1, 1999

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When Lew Sichelman first started writing about housing in 1969, he was the youngest real estate writer in the country. Now, 37 years later, he's one of the oldest -- and most decorated. He has been rated the top housing columnist in the country by the National Association of Realtors as well as by his peers in the National Association of Real Estate Editors. Indeed, NAREE has recognized his work on numerous occasions. One year - due to his advancing age, he can't recall which one - he earned top honors in the annual NAREE Journalism Contest in three out of the four major writing categories. It was the first time one writer has won so many NAREE awards in a single year. Known for his ability to make even the most difficult topics understandable, Sichelman also has been honored by the National Association of Home Builders and the Mortgage Bankers Association. He began providing in-depth coverage of and consumer-oriented information about housing and housing finance at the Washington Daily News, where he was real estate editor. He held that same position for nine more years at the Washington Star, which purchased the News in 1972. The Star, a so-called "writer's newspaper" which also had the misfortune of being an evening paper, was put out of its misery in 1981, and Sichelman, who had begun self-syndicating his column in 1978, decided to become a full-time columnist. Today, his column, "The Housing Scene," is distributed by United Media to newspapers throughout the country. He also is on the staff of National Mortgage News, an independent newspaper which is considered the bible of the mortgage business. And he writes for numerous other publications, including MarketWatch.com, where he answers readers questions once a week, Sports Illustrated (don't ask), RealtyTimes.com, BigBuilder and others. Sichelman is married, the father of five and grandfather of eleven.