Ben Carson fires back at report that no one is home at HUD

Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson fired back at a New York Magazine report on Wednesday after the publication questioned whether there was “anyone home” at the department.

In an interview on Fox News’s “Special Report” with Bret Baier, Carson blasted the magazine for not doing a “journalistic investigation” before publishing the piece.

“I would say that you should ring the doorbell before you conclude that nobody’s at home. I don’t think they did a very good job at journalistic investigation there,” Carson said.

The magazine article described HUD as nearly empty and as an agency with no respect for its leader. One anonymous staffer who spoke to the magazine suggested Carson is underqualified for his position to lead the agency.

{mosads}“People feel disrespected. They see Carson and think, I’ve been in housing policy for 20 or 30 years, and if I walked away, I would never expect to get hired as a nurse,” the staffer said.

In the interview, Carson blamed Democrats for staffing issues at HUD under Trump’s administration, arguing much of it is “politically motivated.” He also downplayed the effect of potential budget cuts, which are up to 15 percent under Trump’s latest proposed budget. 

“A lot of it is politically motivated. Be that as it may, we have a deep bench, a lot of people who are willing to step up to the plate and to help to fashion things and keep things moving in a positive direction,” Carson said. “Do recognize with some of the reorganization that we’ve done already, we’ve realized some tremendous savings.”

He added that efficiency is rare in government.

“This is a concept that is foreign to a lot of people in Washington, the whole concept of efficiency and saving,” he said.

Carson told Fox that he wants to reimagine how the agency operates, but warned that HUD at its core is a bureaucracy, which he doesn’t like.

“It’s a bureaucracy, and I’m not a big fan of bureaucracy,” Carson said. “Bureaucrats are people who think their rules are more important than the goals.”

He continued: “So we are actually reimagining the way that HUD works right now from the bottom up, including the vision of the people who have been there 10, 20, 30, 40 years, rather than just imposing things upon them.”