Notable & Quotable: Advice to Ben Carson
Howard Husock, writing Wednesday in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal on five things HUD Secretary-designate Ben Carson can do right away to improve public housing and reduce government dependency:
Time Limits for Public and Voucher Housing: Sending a signal to new subsidized tenants that they shouldn’t expect lifetime housing support—to which they are entitled at present—would be the best way to change the culture of public housing. . . . Time limits also free up housing units for those who’d otherwise be stuck on a waiting list. Carson should extend the discretion to impose such limits to all 3,000 of the nation’s public-housing authorities.
Stop Work Disincentives for Subsidized Housing: Under current law, a public or subsidized housing tenant must pay 30 percent of his income in rent. That may sound like a good deal, but it means that, for every $100 that a tenant’s income increases, his rent goes up by $30. This creates an obvious disincentive to work. . . .
Privatize Management of Public-Housing Properties: There may once have been good reason for government to build low-income housing, but there’s no reason why it should also manage the properties once they’re built. . . .
End “Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing”: The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule is premised on the wrongheaded idea that the best way to encourage upward mobility among minorities is simply to relocate poor inner-city households to wealthy suburbs. The rule should be done away with. . . .
End Affordable Housing Mandates: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the secondary-mortgage market giants supervised by HUD, are charged with fulfilling the federal government’s affordable-housing mandates. They must demonstrate that large percentages of the mortgages they purchase have been made to low-income buyers or neighborhoods. These mandates contributed to the 2008 financial crisis and continue to send the wrong message to banks, which are essentially told to fulfill mortgage quotas even when loans aren’t repaid.
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal's "Notable & Quotable", adapted from City Journal Online
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Howard Husock is the Vice President of Research and Publications at the Manhattan Institute. From 1987 through 2006, he was director of case studies in public policy and management at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government
This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal