Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge plans to step down from her position on March 22, the White House announced Monday.
“When I took office, we inherited a broken housing system, with fair housing and civil rights protections badly dismantled under the previous administration,” President Joe Biden said in a statement. “On Day One, Marcia got to work rebuilding the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and over the past three years she has been a strong voice for expanding efforts to build generational wealth through homeownership and lowering costs and promoting fairness for America’s renters.”
Before becoming HUD secretary, Fudge served as mayor of Warrensville Heights, Ohio, and represented the state’s 11th congressional district for over a decade. She chaired the Congressional Black Caucus from 2013 to 2015.
While in office, Fudge presided over the Biden administration’s controversial national eviction moratorium before the United States Supreme Court rejected the measure in the summer of 2021. She also contended with rising rates of homelessness in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.
In an interview with USA Today about her retirement published Monday, Fudge said she had “done just about everything” she could “as we go into this crazy, silly season of an election.” She also stressed her belief that affordable housing should be thought of as a bipartisan problem.
“It’s not a red or blue issue,” Fudge said. “Everybody knows that it’s an issue, so it’s not a one-sided issue. It’s an American issue.”
The White House indicated in the Monday statement that deputy secretary of Housing and Urban Development Adrianne Todman will step into Fudge’s role in an acting capacity on March 22, but the Biden administration has not yet announced a full-time successor. It is unclear whether the president will do so before the November election, but the Biden transition team had reportedly considered figures like Atlanta mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass for the position before deciding on Fudge.