President-elect Trump to nominate Dr. Ben Carson for HUD Secretary

Dr. Ben Carson is President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  Dr. Carson will be charged with running an agency with a budget of $47.9 billion and over 8,400 employees.  HUD plays a significant role in all housing arenas.  For example, Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans insure 1 in every 6 new home purchases in the U.S.  Furthermore, HUD oversees funding for some 1.2 million low-income households in public housing scattered throughout the U.S.

While Dr. Carson has no true political experience in housing policy, Dr. Carson wrote the following op-ed for the Washington Times in 2015 criticizing the Obama administrations attempt "to 'affirmatively promote' fair housing, even in the absence of explicit discrimination."  Dr. Carson summarized his views on government's role in housing as follows, "These government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality create consequences that often make matters worse. There are reasonable ways to use housing policy to enhance the opportunities available to lower-income citizens, but based on the history of failed socialist experiments in this country, entrusting the government to get it right can prove downright dangerous."

To read more about this appoint, click here to be transferred to a Wall Street Journal article.