Donald Trump named worst-thing-to-happen-to-neurosurgeons-everywhere Ben Carson to head the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for a few reasons. It allowed Trump to say he hired a person of color that he knew, besides reality star Omarosa. It filled a position in Trump’s cabinet that he couldn’t care less about. And it aligned with the Republican Party’s philosophy of finding the worst people to head federal departments in order to foment further distrust of the federal government while destroying our country’s safety nets. It’s the latter fact that civil rights groups are now organizing around and taking to the courts.
A policy known as the Small Area Fair Market Rent rule was set to go into effect on January 1, 2018, after years of advocacy, research, and public debate. In August, however, HUD abruptly announced it would be delaying the rule’s implementation for two years, claiming that further study was needed.
Brian Sullivan, a HUD spokesperson, told The Intercept that while his office cannot comment on any pending litigation, the delay of the Small Area rule does not represent any change in agency policy. “I gather there are some who believe this is a change of policy, or that it might signal a change in policy, but there is no change in policy,” he said. Sullivan also referred to a blogpost HUD posted on August 25 reiterating this point, specifically that the delay was a decision “informed by research” and that waiting until next summer when the pilot’s final report is released will allow for more successful implementation.
One of the ways that the Section 8 program is flawed is in how the distribution of families receiving the benefit works out geographically, as The Intercept explains.
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More than 5 million people in 2.2 million households use federal housing choice vouchers — colloquially referred to as Section 8, referencing the statute that created the subsidies — to help afford rent on the private market. The subsidies, however, are based on metropolitan-wide rent formulas, meaning that many low-income families are often relegated into communities with few job opportunities, poor schools, and high crime. The rule change would have required — or will require — public housing authorities to calculate so-called fair market rents based on ZIP-codes instead.
And even with God attempting to sway Ben Carson to do the right thing by trapping him in a Section 8 housing elevator back in April, Carson continues to be a dim-witted as ever. With the way that the Republican-led government is “researching” everything from climate change to privatizing public lands, you begin to realize why Donald Trump is pushing super hard to get a bunch of conservative judges into positions of power. Ben Carson’s understanding of the law is illogical at best. This lawsuit is really going to blow his strange mind.