President Joe Biden has made two new nominations for leadership positions in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), including a new nominee for the president of the Government National Mortgage Association (GNMA, or “Ginnie Mae”) according to an announcement on Monday by the White House.
Alanna McCargo has officially been named as the president’s nominee to serve in the leadership position at Ginnie Mae, while Arthur Jemison has been nominated to serve as assistant secretary for public and Indian housing at HUD.
McCargo previously served as vice president of the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center to Marketplace, and currently serves at HUD as senior advisor for housing finance. Much of her career has been centered on questions of housing equality, including how the housing finance system can more equitably provide assistance to stakeholders who would be most affected by the additional assistance that HUD is able to provide to vulnerable populations.
While at the Urban Institute, McCargo’s work similarly focused on issues of housing equality, cultivating a body of work focused on reducing racial homeownership gaps and increasing housing affordability, as well as reducing barriers to capital. McCargo also previously served as executive director of the Mortgage Servicing Collaborative, which developed policy recommendations for mortgage servicing and securitization reforms.
In the case of Arthur Jemison, he comes to his nomination after serving as principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Community Planning and Development at HUD. Mr. Jemison joined HUD after President Biden took office, hailing from Detroit where he was group executive for planning, housing and development.
The position of Ginnie Mae president has not had a permanent appointee since 2017, when Ted Tozer resigned from the position effective on January 20, 2017 when President Donald Trump was sworn into office. Tozer was nominated for the position in 2009 shortly after Barack Obama became president. Michael Bright was appointed interim president of Ginnie Mae by President Trump who also nominated him for the full-time position, but Bright abruptly resigned and saw Maren Kasper take his place as interim president.
Kasper herself also abruptly resigned to take a job in the private sector in late 2019, reportedly after another Trump administration official — Lynne Patton — attempted to have Kasper removed from the administration according to reporting at the Washington Post. After President Trump left office, Patton was later found to have violated government ethics rules for her involvement in the creation of a political video which was possible through her government credentials, and she was barred from government employment for four years.
Read the announcement of McCargo and Jemison’s appointments and several others at the White House.
