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December 13th, 2008 at 8:37 am

President-Elect Barack Obama Weekly Address Video, Photos 12-13-08

Barack Obama and Joe Biden meet with Al Gore, December 9, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama delivered his weekly address via YouTube and radio on December 13, 2008. He discussed the housing crisis and announced Shaun Donovan as his pick for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Watch the address and see photos of Obama at a meeting with Vice President-elect Joe Biden and former Vice President Al Gore on climate change on December 9, 2008 and at a press conference introducing former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as his Health and Human Services Secretary-designate on December 11, 2008 in Chicago, Illinois.

In the weekly address, Obama focused on the economy and how it has impacted homeowners. He pledged to take immediate action on the mortgage crisis, noting that presently 1 in 10 families who owns a home in the U.S. “is now in some form of distress, the most ever recorded.”

Barack Obama and Joe Biden meet with Al Gore, December 9, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama and Vice President-elect Joe Biden meet with former Vice President Al Gore, December 9, 2008

Obama said, “To end this economic crisis, we must end the mortgage crisis where it began. This all started when Americans took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. Some were reckless, aware of the risks they were accepting. But many were innocent, tricked by lenders out to make a quick buck.”

Shaun Donovan

Shaun Donovan (Photo credit: NYC.gov)

He also announced Shaun Donovan as his pick to be his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Donovan is a former Commissioner of Housing Preservation and Development in New York City who also served during the Clinton administration as deputy assistant secretary of HUD. Obama noted that while previously at HUD, Donovan led “an effort to help make housing affordable for nearly two million Americans. Trained as an architect, Shaun understands housing down to how homes are designed, built, and wired.”

Obama acknowledged that in the past HUD — an agency whose vast field of responsibility includes creating affordable housing and revitalizing cities — has had a “mixed record.” Still, he said, Donovan has the right mix of experience to help move the agency “past the stale arguments that say low-income Americans shouldn’t even try to own a home or that our mortgage crisis is due solely to a few greedy lenders.”

Source: Obama Names N.Y. Housing Commissioner to Head HUD

Noting that owning a home is intertwined with the American dream, Obama saide that his secretary of HUD-designate “knows that we can put the dream of owning a home within reach for more families, so long as we’re making loans in the right way, and so long as those who buy a home are prepared for the responsibilities of home ownership.”

Photo credit: Getty Images North America See more photos on Obama-Biden Flickr

Barack Obama with Tom Daschle at a press conference on the U.S. health care system, December 11, 2008

President-elect Barack Obama with Jeanne Lambrew, who will serve as deputy director of the new White House office of Health Reform and former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, his Health and Human Services Secretary-designate at press conference on December 11, 2008 in Chicago