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The neurosurgeon took a scalpel to HUD. Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon, evangelical Christian and one of many people who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in 2016, was an unusual choice to head President Donald Trump?s Department of Housing and Urban Development because he had absolutely no relevant experience in housing. But he took the job anyway, pointing to his bootstrap biography ? as recounted in several books ? to explain why he could do the job: The son of a single mother who is said to have worked three jobs to support her two children, Carson?s Detroit upbringing relied on subsidized housing, food stamps, and, just possibly, Affirmative Action.
And yet, during his almost four-year tenure as secretary of the HUD, Carson has done his best to decimate the budgets of the same types of housing-assistance programs he says his family benefited from. He has eliminated or attempted to eliminate fair housing regulations implemented by the Obama administration that were designed to combat discrimination against Black Americans like Carson. He has removed protections for transgender people and minorities who live in public housing. And he?s done so at the behest of a president who is now using HUD as a prop in his reelection campaign. In a joint op-ed in The Wall Street Journal this week, Trump and Carson described their commitment to ?protect America?s suburbs.? ?It really doesn?t make any sense at all,? says Prentiss Dantzler, an urb...