In an article for Next City, Maurice Jones, LISC's CEO and a former HUD deputy secretary, commended the agency's ongoing commitment to "the cause" of safe, decent housing and neighborhood revitalization. One of five national housing experts who weighed in on the nomination of a new HUD secretary, Jones reminded readers that HUD has a long history of promoting vital programs that help impoverished Americans.
The excerpt below is from:
5 Housing Experts Weigh In on HUD Secretary Nominee Ben Carson
By Oscar Perry Abello, Next City
...The choice of Carson is itself a statement. “There’s not a dearth of qualified Republicans for that job, so if you choose somebody with no background in housing, it says something about your priorities,” says Julia Gordon, executive vice president of the National Community Stabilization Trust (NCST), a national nonprofit that works to restore vacant and abandoned properties. Gordon is particularly concerned about HUD funding for first-time homebuyer counseling, which is essential to NCST’s work.
“It’s really unknown what kind of HUD secretary Carson will be, if he is confirmed,” says Barbara Sard, vice president for housing policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a D.C.-based research and advocacy organization. “There’s cause for concern if he’s not committed to sustaining vital federal rental assistance and continuing to make rental assistance more effective.”
If Carson, the Trump administration or the Republican-controlled Congress want to take a hatchet to rental assistance, the picture is already bleak. Public housing, Section 8 Housing Choice Vouchers and other rental assistance programs make up nearly 80 percent of HUD’s budget, yet only one in four families eligible for rental assistance in the U.S. actually get it.
But Trump and Carson’s true stances on federal housing policy remain largely a mystery. “The president-elect has not talked a great deal about his proposed housing policies, so we don’t have anything to react to at this point,” says Marion McFadden, vice president for public policy at Enterprise Community Partners, one of the nation’s largest nonprofit affordable housing and community development organizations.
“Whatever agenda or whatever priority they have, I look forward to learning what that is,” says Maurice Jones, a former HUD official and current CEO of Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), another major national nonprofit that works on affordable housing and community development.