Something very weird is happening in Washington, D.C. As we all know, the Cabinet picks made by the squatter occupying the White House have been downright oxymoronic, such as Betsy DeVos being in charge of education and Ben Carson as head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
So imagine my shock when I saw HUD’s September 4 announcement that it was awarding “$98.5 million to 285 local public housing authorities across the country to provide permanent affordable housing to nearly 12,000 additional non-elderly persons with disabilities.”
This meant that HUD was giving nearly 12,000 Housing Choice Vouchers to public housing authorities to distribute among low-income disabled people ages eighteen to sixty-two who are “transitioning out of institutional or other segregated settings, at serious risk of institutionalization, homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.” If someone who has one of these vouchers finds appropriate private-market housing, that person pays about 30 percent of their income for rent and the government pays the rest.
I was shocked, because releasing that many new vouchers is an outstanding thing to do. It’s nearly impossible for many disabled people, especially those trying to get out of nursing homes, to find decent and affordable housing unless they have one of these vouchers.
How could Ben Carson sit back and allow something positive to occur?
This is exactly the kind of valuable, constructive action HUD should be taking. So why were they doing it? Did some HUD employees go rogue and run amok? How could Ben Carson sit back and allow something positive to occur? Is he taking drugs, like maybe acid or happy mushrooms?
Or maybe there’s a catch. Maybe deep in the fine print it says all these beautiful new vouchers can only be used to pay the rent for apartments on Mars.
So I checked into it. It’s all part of HUD’s Section 811 Mainstream Housing Choice Voucher Program, which was in place long before Carson or the Squatter came along. Congress allocated $397 million in the 2017 and 2018 federal budgets to provide additional new vouchers and this was HUD’s first allotment of vouchers.
So HUD is just doing what Congress is telling it to do. In fairness to Carson and the squatter, they were saddled with great mission, like an albatross of justice. It wasn’t their idea. But still, couldn’t one of them have done something to stop such a sensible thing from happening? After all, it will probably make life much better for thousands of low-income disabled people across the country. That’s an affront to everything their administration stands for.
In HUD’s announcement, Carson is quoted as saying, “HUD is committed to making sure people with disabilities have a decent, safe and affordable place to call home.”
Some nefarious character, bent on creating a better world, must have slipped something into the agency’s water supply.