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The Doctor Is In: How Ben Carson as HUD Secretary Will Affect the Housing Market

Retired neurosurgeon and former Republican presidential contender Ben Carson was officially nominated to be the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal agency responsible for helping people secure affordable housing in a time when rents and home prices are skyrocketing.

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

It had been rumored for the past two weeks that Carson would be nominated to the position. The appointment must still receive Congressional approval.

Carson, a celebrated surgeon, has no experience in housing policy and has never worked for the federal government, and initially seemed hesitant to accept the position.

In November, his spokesperson, Armstrong Williams, told The Hill, “Dr. Carson … has never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.” But Carson more recently has cited his background as qualification for the position. He was raised in Detroit by a single mother and, for a time, lived in public housing as a child.

“We cannot have a strong nation if we have weak inner cities,” Carson, 65, recently told Fox News. “We have to get beyond the promises and start really doing something.”

In his new job, Carson will play a key role in creating and ushering through policies that could affect the housing market well beyond the next four years. Those policies will also play a role in determining the futures of the millions of Americans who depend on HUD, ranging from the poorest Americans seeking subsidized housing to first-time buyers shopping for mortgages.

“Ben shares my optimism about the future of our country and is part of ensuring that this is a presidency representing all Americans,” Trump said in a statement.

As is the case with his future boss, the doctor is better known for a long and storied career in an unrelated field—in Carson’s case, brain surgery—than for the government portfolio he would oversee. (The Yale graduate became the director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital when he was 33.) This is a departure from the past two HUD secretaries, who brought housing and urban renewal experience to the position.

“After serious discussions with the Trump transition team, I feel that I can make a significant contribution particularly to making our inner cities great for everyone,” Carson posted on his Facebook page last month. “We have much work to do in strengthening every aspect of our nation and ensuring that both our physical infrastructure and our spiritual infrastructure is solid.”

Some housing groups, such as the National Housing Conference, believe HUD’s  future direction will become more clear once the agency’s deputy posts are filled.

“Dr. Carson has the ability to make a significant positive impact on the lives of millions of Americans through a strong commitment to the vital work of this agency,” Chris Estes, president and CEO of the conference, said in a statement. The conference is a nonprofit group focused on affordable housing.

New priorities under Carson

Housing experts are trying to determine what Carson’s appointment will mean for the agency, which oversees an annual budget of about $47 billion. Many believe the appointment signals that a reprioritization of HUD in the new administration is in the works.

“If [housing was at] the top of some policy agenda, I would think [Trump] would want to put someone in charge who has a real record in dealing with these issues,” says Rachel Meltzer, an urban policy professor at the New School in New York.

The current agency chief, Julián Castro, is a former San Antonio mayor who helped revitalize the Texas city’s downtown, earning him accolades for urban development. His immediate predecessor, Shaun Donovan, who was in the position from 2009 to 2014, had been  the commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration and the New York City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development before his appointment.

“With so many qualified candidates to choose from with deep knowledge of and commitment to affordable housing solutions for the poorest families, and with the housing crisis reaching new heights across the country, Dr. Ben Carson’s nomination to serve as HUD secretary is surprising and concerning,” Diane Yentel, president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said in a statement.

But housing neophytes have held the position in the past as well. Steve Preston, who served from 2008 to 2009, came from more of a finance background, having been the administrator of the Small Business Administration, a government agency.

During his run for the Republican nomination, Carson gave some indications of his views toward U.S. housing policy.

He pledged to eliminate home mortgage interest deductions when he was running for the Oval Office. But these deductions, which allow homeowners to subtract what they pay off each month from their taxes, are unlikely to be abolished, most experts believe.

“You’d be taking away a tax break that benefits higher-income homeowners,” says Meltzer.

Carson also supported scaling back and eliminating various federal programs he deemed “wasteful, inefficient, or unnecessary” in a six-page document outlining his positions during the race. He indicated he would support privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which insure mortgages.

That would “severely limit” the number of mortgages available and the lowest rates borrowers can get—unless those same mortgages were guaranteed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury, says Peter Orser, acting director of the Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies at the University of Washington.

“Without these agencies to support first-time home buyers, buyers have [few] other solutions, because the private market doesn’t have the lending capacity, the rates will not be as low, and it could be harder for borrowers to qualify for loans,” Orser says.

Fair housing rule may come under fire

Carson has also stated his opposition to a HUD rule, the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Act, which requires certain communities that receive HUD grants to assess and address problems with residents of all races, nationalities, disabilities, and income levels to ensure they receive equal access to housing.

“This is just an example of what happens when we allow the government to infiltrate every part of our lives,” Carson told Iowa radio host Jan Mickelson in June 2015 in response to a question about Iowans allegedly having to recruit poor people from Chicago to qualify for Section 8 housing.

Carson expanded his position further by stating the rule would “fundamentally change the nature of some communities from primarily single-family to largely apartment-based areas by encouraging municipalities to strike down housing ordinances that have no overtly (or even intended) discriminatory purpose … all in the name of promoting diversity,” in a July 2015 piece he penned for The Washington Times.

But doing away with the rule has its risks, says Solomon Greene, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research institute based in Washington, DC.

“The fears are that we have been making slow but important progress in this country toward ensuring our neighborhoods, cities, and regions are more [racially] inclusive and integrated,” Greene says. “But it could change and turn around.”

What the future could hold for affordable housing

Carson’s appointment could also affect taxpayer-supported subsidized housing, which primarily helps homeless, low-income, and even senior Americans.

“Dealing with the affordable housing crisis in the U.S. is a critical issue facing our country,” says Scott Muldavin, chair of the Counselors of Real Estate, a Chicago-based group of industry professionals who provide real estate advice. “The winds are blowing against government subsidies in housing.”

Creating more affordable housing isn’t a problem that the next HUD secretary will be able to tackle on his or her own. It will require the president and Congress to work with state and local governments to come up with solutions, he says.

“It seems that housing affordability is going to be in for a difficult stretch, given the Republican Congress and new administration’s general position on reducing the size of government,” Muldavin says. But if Carson “can fight the battles in the most important places, he might be able to move the needle a little.”

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