U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson appeared on Fox & Friends Tuesday morning and gave a head-scratching explanation for why the nation’s homelessness crisis is booming. Given his politics, his appearing on Fox is far from a surprise, but the now-viral clip is uniquely stunning.
Before we get into the clip itself, it’s worth looking back on what Carson has said and done as HUD secretary in the Trump administration. Early in his tenure, he’d already started destroying public housing. This month, he proposed a rule to weaken fair housing enforcement in federal housing programs. He also allegedly made transphobic comments during HUD staff meetings about transgender women accessing women’s shelters. On a lighter note, he once confused a banking term with the brand name of a cookie.
Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt asked Carson how people should respond to homeless people they encounter. Should they give money to people on the street?
Carson compared the U.S. to Japan, claiming that Japan has “virtually no homelessness” (which, by the way, is not true at all) and blaming homelessness in the U.S. on regulations that “keep you from being able to use technology.” He cited modular homes and innovative manufactured housing as examples of things that “stacks and stacks” of regulations keep people from taking advantage of. He also said that instead of just “throwing more and more” money, vouchers, or services at people, people need to get “out of the system.” Meaning, presumably, that they need to be stripped of all government support.
It’s a real trip.
Judging by his Twitter post from this morning, he seems to think it went pretty well.
Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro, on the other hand, campaigned for president with a full, detailed plan on how to best support homeless people and make housing affordable, and visited homeless communities. Homeless people are not boogeymen or abstractions; they’re people who need government support.