Trump Chooses Ben Carson to Lead HUD

Ben Carson endorsed Donald J. Trump at Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., in March. Credit Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Ben Carson, who took Donald J. Trump on a tour of blighted neighborhoods in Detroit during the presidential campaign, including his boyhood home, has been chosen by Mr. Trump to oversee one of the government’s main efforts to lift American cities as secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Mr. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, was an early endorser of Mr. Trump after ending his own presidential bid.

“Ben Carson has a brilliant mind and is passionate about strengthening communities and families within those communities,” Mr. Trump said in a statement Monday morning. “We have talked at length about my urban renewal agenda and our message of economic revival, very much including our inner cities.”

“Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a presidency representing all Americans,” he added. “He is a tough competitor and never gives up.”

With no experience in government or running a large bureaucracy, Mr. Carson, 65, publicly waffled over whether to join the administration. He will oversee an agency with a $47 billion budget, bringing to the job a philosophical opposition to government programs that encourage what he calls “dependency” and engage in “social engineering.”

He has no expertise in housing policy, but he did spend part of his childhood in public housing, said a close friend, Armstrong Williams, and he was raised by a dauntless mother with a grammar-school education. In his autobiography he stressed that individual effort, not government programs, were the key to overcoming poverty.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development oversees programs that provide vouchers and other rental assistance for five million low-income families, fights urban blight and helps struggling homeowners stave off foreclosures.

Housing policy was rarely mentioned on the campaign trail by candidates in either party. When Mr. Trump spoke of “inner cities,” he painted with a broad brush to describe the lives of poor blacks and Hispanics as “a disaster,” pleading for their votes by asking, “What do you have to lose?”

In an opinion article in 2015 for The Washington Times, Mr. Carson compared an Obama administration housing regulation to “the failure of school busing” because it would place affordable housing “primarily in wealthier neighborhoods with few current minority residents.”

The rule, known as Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, was years in the making and designed to end decades-old segregation by offering affluent areas incentives to build affordable housing. Critics, including Mr. Carson, called it government overreach.

Barbara Sard, a former official at the housing department during President Obama’s first term, said Mr. Carson’s view was a misunderstanding of the regulation and its origin in the 1968 Fair Housing Act. The rule also included development funds for poor neighborhoods.

“He doesn’t seem to understand that extending access to opportunity includes improving conditions in racially concentrated neighborhoods,” said Ms. Sard, now vice president for housing policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In a recent television interview, Mr. Carson said that he was prepared to lead the agency because he grew up “in the inner city” and because as a physician in Baltimore he has “dealt with a lot of patients from that area.”

“We cannot have a strong nation if we have weak inner cities,” Mr. Carson told Fox News. “We have to get beyond the promises and start really doing something. The amount of corruption and graft and things, shell games that are played — we need to get rid of all that stuff.”

Born into poverty, Mr. Carson was awarded a scholarship to Yale, and by age 33 he was named director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

He became an author, a philanthropist supporting scholarships for young students, and a conservative star after attacking Mr. Obama’s health care law.

During his campaign, he expressed a sweeping opposition to many government programs devised to end poverty, which he said had replaced church-based and other community initiatives.

“We the people have the responsibility to take care of the indigent in our society,” he said at a Republican town hall-style event in February. “It’s not the government’s job.”

When he gained on Mr. Trump in polls last year, Mr. Trump attacked his rags-to-riches biography. Mr. Trump ridiculed his rival’s account of how he nearly committed a stabbing as a youth, a pivotal moment in Mr. Carson’s life story that led to prayer and a calmer temper. “How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?” Mr. Trump asked at a rally in Iowa.

But after Mr. Carson dropped out of the race in March, he reconciled with Mr. Trump and became a frequent surrogate on television for him. A key moment of building trust, Mr. Williams said, was at a debate in February when Mr. Carson missed his cue to take the stage, and Mr. Trump walked out with him to ease the awkwardness.

“They both have grown,” Mr. Williams said. “Dr. Carson has tremendous respect for this man.”

“These guys have been friends, like brothers, forever,” he added.

Weeks ago, as Mr. Carson seemed reluctant to join the administration, Mr. Williams was quoted as saying his longtime friend did not want to get in over his head.

“Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience; he’s never run a federal agency,” Mr. Williams told The Hill, which covers the federal government.

Mr. Carson said on Facebook at the time that he had told Mr. Trump that “I preferred to work outside of government as an adviser,” but that if asked, he would serve. He signaled the day before Thanksgiving that he was ready to take on the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The announcement was delayed as Mr. Carson, who once had planned to learn to play the organ in retirement, gave himself several days to mull it over.

NYT