Housing Activists May Find First Lady an Ally

The housing cause may find a second White House patron in First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Although long aligned with children’s issues, she has demonstrated an interest in housing that has gone largely unnoticed, sources said.

“She knows a lot about it and cares a lot about it,” said Clinton housing adviser Marc A. Weiss, particularly in the area of “housing rehabilitation and how it stabilizes neighborhoods and communities.”

During the campaign, candidate Clinton frequently cited Tampa’s Resurrection for Affordable Housing program as a model for rehabilitating condemned housing and reselling it to low-income families. But it was Hillary Clinton who earlier this year visited program headquarters for an in-depth look, said Fernando Noriega, manager of community redevelopment for the City of Tampa.

Paul S. Grogan, president of the Local Initiative Support Corp. (LISC), a group that trains community groups to tackle neighborhood housing problems, recounted a chance meeting with Hillary Clinton.

Grogan said she was well informed about his organization, and housing issues in general. “It is a more recent interest of hers, but it is certainly intense,” he said.

He noted that Hillary Rodham Clinton serves on the corporate boards of several companies that, along with then-Gov. Clinton, successfully wooed LISC into starting an Arkansas operation.