A former high-ranking Obama Administration housing policy official has come out against the nomination of Dr. Ben Carson to become the next Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), claiming that the choice of Dr. Carson is evidence that President-Elect Donald Trump has no interest in formulating a serious housing strategy.
In an
opinion column published on Time.com, Mark Linton, who was the director of HUD’s Partnership Center and the executive director of the White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities, dubbed Dr. Carson’s nomination “offensive” and a poor reflection of the incoming president’s priorities.
“Carson’s appointment means that Donald Trump plans to ignore America’s housing and community redevelopment needs by placing a completely unqualified partisan to run an agency he clearly doesn’t understand—or, worse, that Trump does want Dr. Carson to run the agency, acting on his scariest and wackiest views,” he wrote. “Either represents a deeply cynical approach to governing.”
Linton added that Dr. Carson’s previous experience in neurosurgery did not provide him with any professional training required for the HUD position.
“Most Americans know that you only call a brain surgeon when you need one thing: brain surgery,” he continued. “If you want to buy a home, or help to build a community center in your neighborhood or complain when a landlord won’t rent to you because of who you are or who you love, you call HUD. If you’re a community reeling from a natural disaster, you call HUD, which has administered billions of dollars in disaster recovery funds in the last decade alone. Imagine a HUD Secretary on the other end of the line who tells you that he doesn’t know how he would respond to a hurricane, as Dr. Carson said last year.”
Linton also insisted that Dr. Carson would be comfortable pushing racially inappropriate policies while at HUD, and called for public condemnation of the nomination.
“We may not be able to stop Dr. Carson’s confirmation,” he stated. “But failing to loudly and clearly protest his appointment belittles the millions of Americans that HUD serves every day. It would also mean that we’re failing to confront Trump directly by saying: We’re on to you. We reject what you’re trying to do. And we will fight it.”
