Ben Carson, secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, recently made the third stop in his listening tour: Florida.
Carson began his tour in his hometown of Detroit and then proceeded to visit the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. While in Dallas, Carson both spoke of his vision for HUD and listened to local community leaders about their programs.
After he arrived in Florida, Twitter blew up when the secretary found himself stuck in an elevator for 20 minutes while visiting public housing in the area.
Alonzo Mourning and police wait for fire dept to arrive . Sec. Ben Carson is stuck in the elevator iat the Courtside Family Apartments pic.twitter.com/vySNZLNgD3
— Rene Rodriguez (@ReneMiamiHerald) April 12, 2017
However, Carson did, in fact, do more than sit in an elevator during his time in Florida. While in Miami, he toured an apartment complex that one of his hosts said would not exist without one of the programs that would be eliminated in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget cut: the HOME fund, according to an article by Douglas Hanks for the Miami Herald.
From the article:
“This building wouldn’t have come to fruition without the HOME fund,” Stephanie Berman, president of Carrfour Supportive Housing, said a few steps from Carson during his tour of one of the charity’s Miami properties, the Villa Aurora apartments.
In Trump’s propsed budget, HUD’s funding would be slashed by 13%, or $6.2 billion, and would include the elimination of the $950 million HOME program.
While Carson previously sent out a statement supporting Trump’s proposed budget and its cut for the agency Carson heads, he cautioned in Miami against reading too much into the proposed budget cuts.
From the article:
“If you look at various budget stories, it says we’re going to eliminate HOME, we’re going to eliminate CDBG, this, that and the other,” Carson said, naming two HUD programs listed as being eliminated in Trump’s official budget proposal.
“What you need to concentrate on is: The parts of these programs that are functioning well — and that are maintaining people — are going to be preserved,” Carson said during a press conference at Hialeah’s Hoffman Gardens low-income townhouse development. “There may be a different nomenclature. We may not call it the same thing …We are clearly going to maintain these programs that are going very well.”
