Remember when millions of us knew that it would be a bad idea to appoint a very awkward neurosurgeon with no government experience as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)? Remember how Donald Trump went ahead and did it anyway? Well, we were right. Ben Carson might be a brilliant doctor, but he’s a terrible housing secretary. Under normal circumstances, it might be fun to say, “We told you so.” But Carson poses a grave threat to the safety of Americans living in public housing, and is a barrier to affordable housing access for people of color.
Recently, he abandoned families living in public housing in East St. Louis, Illinois, by returning control to the local housing authority which had been under HUD control since 1985. He did this despite HUD inspectors having issued failing grades to nine out of 12 of East St. Louis’s public housing projects. And then last week, he sunk even further when he announced that HUD was ending the “affirmatively furthering fair housing” rule (AFFH), a 2015 Obama-era rule designed to end segregation and discriminatory practices in housing. In the press release announcing this change, Carson calls the rule “unworkable” and says that it “impeded the development and rehabilitation of affordable housing.”
Of course, no one who actually works on fair housing issues agrees with Ben. They say that the rule required cities to simply set fair housing goals, but didn’t establish specific requirements on how to meet them, and it seemed to have been working in certain places. Under the rule, wealthy Chester County, Pennsylvania, committed to decreasing the population of Section 8 recipients in public housing from 44 to 39 percent and detailed exactly how they’d do it. Housing advocates and researchers think eliminating the rule is a mistake. And they reject Carson’s claim that the rule would result in a lack of affordable housing. As Slate reports, Andrea Ponsor, who works with Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future, said: “We were very supportive of the rule and we don’t feel like it had its opportunity to work yet.”
Under the leadership of the Obama administration, HUD spent six years drafting the AFFH rule. And in just 18 months under Trump, all that work has been eliminated. Carson’s HUD is now employing a hands-off approach when it comes to housing discrimination. They plan to allow local jurisdictions to do whatever they want when it comes to fair housing—without articulating specific goals or having any real accountability.
In fact, back in January, HUD abandoned more rigorous Obama-era assessment tools and allowed jurisdictions to do their own self-evaluations to see if they are actually complying with the Fair Housing Act. The self-evaluations consist of a set of ridiculously easy questions that are insulting compared to the previous ones. This is sure not to go well, and will only increase inequality and segregation and discrimination in housing. But, hey, are we surprised?
This is exactly what happens when unqualified people who don’t care about anything other than making America work for rich white men are allowed to run the government. It’s also a demonstration that the Trump administration will stop at nothing to harm the poor and people of color, especially using other people of color to do it. It’s no accident that Trump’s black HUD secretary is the one overseeing the dismantling of the Fair Housing Act. Anything to send us back to the Stone Age, where white supremacy and discrimination reigned and there were no laws or policies to protect us from it. Welcome to yet another day in Trump’s America.