Tag: Ben Carson

Biden’s First Task at Housing Agency: Rebuilding Trump-Depleted Ranks

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An exodus of top-level officials during the previous administration has left the Department of Housing and Urban Development short of expertise even as its role expands.

WASHINGTON — During the 2020 campaign, President Biden pledged to transform the Department of Housing and Urban Development into a frontline weapon in the fight against racial and economic inequality.

But when his transition team took over last fall, it found a department in crisis.

The agency’s community planning and development division, the unit responsible for a wide array of federal disaster relief and homelessness programs, had been so weakened by an exodus of career officials that it was faltering under the responsibility of managing tens of billions of dollars in pandemic aid, according to members of the team. Continue reading.

‘So much privilege’: Epidemiologist blasts Ben Carson’s access to $650,0 COVID treatment pre-FDA approval

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One of the numerous White House and Republican officials to contract the COVID-19 virus is HUD director Ben Carson. With the Trump administration news cycle adding years to every day, Carson’s condition was kept out of public. On Friday, Carson wrote on his Facebook page that his experience became very dire.

Carson wrote: “Thank you everyone for your support and prayers as Candy and I battled COVID-19. I was extremely sick and initially took Oleander 4X with dramatic improvement. However, I have several co-morbidities and after a brief period when I only experienced minor discomfort, the symptoms accelerated and I became desperately ill. President Trump was following my condition and cleared me for the monoclonal antibody therapy that he had previously received, which I am convinced saved my life.” As epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding tweeted, “He survived after using monoclonal antibody drugs—*before* it was FDA approved. So much privilege—250k Americans weren’t so lucky.”

Estimates on what this treatment would have cost any of the 250,000 Americans who have died after contracting the virus range from well above $100,000 to about $650,000, in our current system. Whether or not this combination of drugs helped save Carson’s life is not entirely proven. Carson was able to receive the treatment well before the FDA approved it, on Saturday—the day after Carson’s Facebook post. Continue reading.

HUD Secretary Ben Carson tests positive for the coronavirus

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Carson was at the White House for an election night party

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson has tested positive for the coronavirus, a HUD spokesman confirmed.

Carson, who tested positive Monday morning, was at the White House last Tuesday for an election night event, as was White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who also has tested positive for the virus. Carson was around senior administration officials and other Cabinet members during the event.

In a statement, HUD deputy chief of staff Coalter Baker said Carson is in “good spirits” and “feels fortunate to have access to effective therapeutics which aid and markedly speed his recovery.” Continue reading.

Ben Carson belittles George Floyd protests: ‘I grew up at a time when there was real systemic racism’

AlterNet logoSecretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson once again showed the public he is really drinking the president’s Kool-Aid on racism in America. The respected neurosurgeon turned laughable President Donald Trump apologist piled comparison on top of comparison Sunday on CNN in order to paint George Floyd’s death as an exception and not the rule on police brutality. Video shows a white cop kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes before he later died in Minneapolis police custody.

Following his death and the mass protests it triggered throughout the nation, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Carson, “do you think systemic racism is a problem in law enforcement agencies in the United States.”

Let’s say this. I grew up at a time when there was real systemic racism,” Carson responded. Continue reading.

Ben Carson Insists Trump Isn’t Racist Because Black Employees ‘Love Him’

The sole black member of Donald Trump’s Cabinet insisted this week that Trump is not racist because he is liked by his minority employees and let wealthy Jewish and black people join his Mar-a-Lago club.

Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson on Friday told attendees at a summit on economic opportunity that he’d gotten to know Trump — who spent much of the 2016 campaign portraying Carson as a low-energy man with a “pathological” temper, a questionable religion, and no leadership ability — since joining his administration.

“Talking to the people who drive the cars and park the cars at Mar-a-Lago — they love him. The people who wash the dishes, because he’s kind and compassionate,” Carson said. Continue reading.

Ben Carson’s disturbing retreat on fair housing

Washington Post logoTHE UNITED STATES has made progress in residential desegregation since the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. Segregation between whites and blacks, as measured by demographers, declined by roughly a third between 1970 and 2010, according to statistical analysis by University of Michigan sociologist William H. Frey. Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go toward the ideal of discrimination-free housing. To cite just one example, a recently published undercover investigation by the Long Island-based newspaper Newsday found that real estate agents subjected fully 40 percent of minority “testers” posing as homebuyers to disadvantageous treatment relative to whites.

Recognizing the unfinished business, the Obama administration in 2015 promulgated a new regulation pursuant to the Fair Housing Act’s requirement that the federal government “affirmatively . . . further the policies of” the 1968 law. The regulation would have put teeth into that long-underenforced provision by requiring cities and towns to examine housing patterns for evidence of unlawful discrimination, then formulate plans to overcome it, as a condition of eligibility for federal housing and development aid.

Now, however, the Trump administration has formalized plans to undo the Obama-era rule. On Tuesday, it released a draft rule that waters down the definition of “affirmatively furthering fair housing.” The 2015 rule called for “meaningful actions” that “replac[e] segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns”; now merely “advancing fair housing choice within the program participant’s control or influence” will pass muster with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Continue reading.

Ben Carson’s HUD will propose new rule, further weakening enforcement of fair housing laws

Washington Post logoThe Trump administration will propose a new rule as early as Monday that would reduce the burden on local governments to meet their fair housing obligations, further scaling back civil rights enforcement.

Among the changes sought by the Department of Housing and Urban Development: redefining what it means to promote fair housing, eliminating the assessment used to address barriers to racial integration, and encouraging cities to remove regulations that stand in the way of affordable housing, according to the proposed rule obtained by The Washington Post.

Fair housing advocates say the proposal reduces the financial pressure on local governments to end residential segregation, as required by the 1968 Fair Housing Act, and is the latest erosion of Obama-era regulations designed to enforce the landmark legislation. Continue reading

Another Bad Week For Americans With Carson Leading HUD

This week, Ben Carson defended illegally delaying federal housing funding for Puerto Rico and complained about “political correctness” when given a chance to apologize for his past transphobic comments. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is making it harder for families to fight discrimination under the Fair Housing Act. In short, it was a very bad week for Americans with Ben Carson leading HUD.

Ben Carson and HUD officials defended missing a legally required deadline to provide Puerto Rico federal housing funds allocated by Congress after Hurricane Maria.

NBC News: “The Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson, defended his agency for knowingly missing a legally required deadline that would have kicked off a monthslong process to help Puerto Rico get billions in federal housing funds Congress allocated after Hurricane Maria devastated the island in 2017.  Carson justified HUD’s actions after Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., asked him ‘where in federal law is HUD empowered to withhold money that was supposed to go to Puerto Rico’ during a congressional hearing on Tuesday.” Continue reading “Another Bad Week For Americans With Carson Leading HUD”

HUD Secretary Ben Carson makes dismissive comments about transgender people, angering agency staff

Washington Post logoHousing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson expressed concern about “big, hairy men” trying to infiltrate women’s homeless shelters during an internal meeting, according to three people present who interpreted the remarks as an attack on transgender women.

While visiting HUD’s San Francisco office this week, Carson also lamented that society no longer seemed to know the difference between men and women, two of the agency staffers said.

Carson’s remarks visibly shocked and upset many of the roughly 50 HUD staffers who attended Tuesday’s meeting, and prompted at least one woman to walk out in protest, the staffers said.

View the complete September 19 article by Tracy Jan and Jeff Stein on The Washington Post website here.

As Trump prepares big push on homelessness, White House floats new role for police

Washington Post logoWhite House economists said Monday that police officers could be used as part of an intensifying effort to address a recent spike in homelessness, but they declined to offer more specifics as to what role law enforcement might play.

The comments were part of a White House report that formalized and escalated the administration’s push to address the spike in homelessness, particularly in California, which the Trump administration has largely blamed on Democrats.

The report was written by the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) and comes a day before President Trump is expected to visit California. A number of senior White House advisers visited California last week to study the increase in homelessness there, and they have spent months discussing what role the federal government could play to intervene. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson is also expected to visit the state this week as part of the push.

View the complete September 16 article by Jeff Stein on The Washington Post website here.