Neurosurgeon and failed presidential candidate Ben Carson will have to demonstrate that he is able to make the transition to government on Thursday, when he appears before the Senate Banking Committee for a hearing on his nomination to be secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The 65-year-old Carson also will have to demonstrate that he’s a quick study. He has no background in housing, urban policy or other areas relevant to the job, beyond the fact that he grew up poor and became a major success.
Senators, particularly Democrats, will seek to test his knowledge. They also will try to get a sense of the Trump administration’s housing priorities, which remain mostly unknown.
Here are five of the big questions Carson is likely to face:
1. Are you qualified to run a big agency?
Before President-elect Trump picked him to run the agency, Carson’s business manager suggested that he didn’t have the experience to do so.
Armstrong Williams told the Hill that “Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency.”
Set aside the conflict between that statement and Carson’s run for the presidency, which is the biggest job of all. Senators are going to want to know why Carson should be entrusted with the agency’s nearly $50 billion budget.
Nevertheless, previous HUD secretaries have come in without extensive service. And Carson has received support from key industry groups, such as the Mortgage Bankers Association.
2. Are you against fair housing?
Carson doesn’t have a track record when it comes to housing, nor has he said much about his view of the role of the federal government or the specific programs run by HUD.
But he did weigh in, somewhat randomly, on one of the most controversial initiatives of the Obama HUD in a 2015 op-ed, taking aim at the administration’s new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule.
The clunkily named rule requires counties and towns that receive HUD funds to develop and submit plans for reducing racial inequality and other disparities faced by protected groups.
Critics have said that it would inject the federal government into local zoning decisions. In his op-ed, Carson wrote that it was an example of “government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality,” bound to fail.
Democrats, in particular, are likely to ask Carson whether he disagrees with the overarching goal of fair housing. Although it was overshadowed by other Obama initiatives, the rule could have far-reaching implications for neighborhoods across the country.
3. Will he drop the focus on LGBT housing?
Outgoing secretary Julian Castro has focused on the department’s aid for gay youth, who make up a disproportionate share of the youth homeless population. Most recently, in September the department expanded its nondiscrimination rules for shelter programs to cover gender identity.
In a list of questions sent to Carson, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., noted that he has, in the past, spoken skeptically about transgenderism and asked if he would continue to enforce those rules.
Although the rules in question might be a small part of HUD in terms of dollars, they could provide a social-issues controversy at the hearing.
4. What is your plan for ending the affordable housing crisis?
Castro has consistently said that the U.S. faces an affordable housing “crisis,” and he’s not the first HUD secretary to make that claim.
According to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, nearly half of all renters are “burdened” in the sense that they pay more than 30 percent of their income on rent. About a quarter are “severely burdened,” paying half their income in rent.
HUD is the agency that is supposed to promote housing affordability, but by its own secretary’s acknowledgment, it’s not succeeding.
Liberal Democrats will want to know if Carson has plans for boosting funding for affordable housing and voucher programs. Republicans likely will ask about other alternatives for lowering housing costs.
5. Will he reverse the Obama administration’s “parting gift” to borrowers?
Just this week, Castro announced that the Federal Housing Administration, which is housed within HUD, would cut the interest rate on premiums on insurance for mortgages backed by the agency, a move that he depicted as a benefit to potential homebuyers and a reflection of the healing housing market.
Conservatives, however, saw it as a fiscally irresponsible move that would increase risk at the agency, which provides mortgages with down payments as low as 3.5 percent, popular with first-time and low-income homebuyers.
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, the Republican chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, sarcastically called the move the administration’s “parting gift” for taxpayers and warned that it would raise the odds of a bailout.
But Castro’s move could just as easily be reversed by Carson, or whoever ultimately heads HUD. Senators will try to learn whether he will and will want to get a better view of his view of government involvement in housing finance generally.
