HUD Chief Resigns

HUD Chief Alphonso Jackson announces resignation. The Bush administration’s top housing official is under a criminal investigation and announced Monday he is quitting. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson said his resignation will take effect on April 18. For a couple of years now, Jackson has been fending off allegations of cronyism and favoritism involving HUD contractors. The FBI has been examining the ties between Jackson and a friend who was paid $392,000 by Jackson’s department as a construction manager in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He did not mention these allegations in his speech, instead citing there is a time to “attend more diligently to personal and family matters. Now is such a time for me.”