Steven Shepherd

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

SKILLS

ABOUT STEVEN SHEPHERD

Hi, I\'m Shep. I\'m currently a Senior CPD Specialist in the Entitlement Communities Division in the Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD) at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). That\'s a mouthful of acronyms, huh? My office provides Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding to 1200+ Metropolitan Cities and Urban Counties with a dual goal of helping low and moderate-income people and fostering economically-thriving urban communities. CDBG funding is a flexible resource which can fund a wide variety of community development activities and projects. It revitalizes disinvested neighborhoods with new (and rehabilitated) housing and infrastructure projects, it funds economic development activities and creates new jobs, and it supports community facilities and services, like after-school programs and domestic violence shelters. Our office does great work, and I\'m proud to be part of the HUD Headquarters team that keeps the CDBG Entitlement Program running.Feel free to shoot me a About My HUD CareerI started at HUD in 2012 as a Presidential Management Fellow (PMF), and have worked in three of HUD\'s five core offices: 1) the Federal Housing Administration (Office of Housing); 2) the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO); and 3) the Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD). I\'ve worked on a wide range of urban policy issues, including:• city and regional planning;• community and economic development;• fair housing and residential desegregation;• disaster recovery and climate change resilience;• single-family housing mortgage origination and appraisal policies; and• energy efficiency and lowering utility costs in public and affordable housing. Regardless of the office or issue I\'ve worked on, I\'ve always put the people HUD serves first—striving to design products, services, and experiences that simply \"work\" for people. I\'m an advocate for clear writing (a.k.a. plain language) and using human-centered design (HCD) to make government respond better to the American people\'s HUDI worked in transportation planning for the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) in California and in youth development with the AmeriCorps organization \"City Year\" in Louisiana. I studied Political Science and Philosophy at Sewanee: The University of the South, and received my Masters degree in Urban Planning from the University of Southern California, specializing in urban design and transportation planning.