Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson sent a blistering letter to House Financial Services Chairwoman Maxine Waters, accusing her of hypocrisy on combating homelessness and calling her professionalism into question.
“My mother always taught me that people shouldn’t throw rocks, especially while they live in a glass house,” Carson wrote to Waters, Politico reported Monday. “Basic manners elude you and it seems that instead of producing results, you’re more interested in producing cheap headlines at the President’s expense — like a true career politician.”
Carson’s letter was in response to a message Waters sent the White House in late October demanding an explanation justifying a sweeping plan to remove homeless people from the streets of California.
“Your shamelessness knows no bounds,” Waters said to President Trump.
Carson hit back with an apparent reference to Waters’s southeastern Los Angeles district, saying, “Shamelessness is allowing more than 55,000 Americans to live on the very streets they represent.”
Los Angeles Police Department data shows homelessness and crime carried out by people living on city streets have skyrocketed in recent years. In 2019, for example, police recorded more than 2,400 arrests of homeless people on assault charges.
Trump has decried the growing homelessness population in major cities across the country and has laid the blame for the crisis at the feet of Democrats who often run and represent large metropolises. Last month, the Trump administration ousted the executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.
In his letter, Carson said his team has attempted to set up meetings with Waters to work on affordable housing issues facing her district and those like it nationwide, but that she has “refused” the offer.
“I have sent multiple letters to your office and requested numerous meetings, but each time you’ve refused,” he said. “To me, the most compassionate, obvious, and logical solution would be to get as many homeless Americans off the streets — with a roof over their heads — as soon as humanly possible.”
