President Trump has reportedly appointed a longtime Trump family supporter and event planner with no housing experience to oversee federal housing programs in New York.

Lynne Patton will lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) region that oversees New York and New Jersey, the New York Daily News reported Thursday. — The Hill

Poverty is largely “a state of mind”, housing secretary Ben Carson has claimed, dismaying observers who had modest hopes for his tenure.

Carson, the neurosurgeon who heads the agency charged with helping low-income Americans gain access to affordable housing, told Sirius XM radio: “You take somebody who has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there.” — The Guardian

As he toured facilities for the poor in Ohio last week, Mr. Carson, the neurosurgeon-turned-housing secretary, joked that a relatively well-appointed apartment complex for veterans lacked “only pool tables.” He inquired at one stop whether animals were allowed. At yet another, he nodded, plainly happy, as officials explained how they had stacked dozens of bunk beds inside a homeless shelter and purposefully did not provide televisions. — The New York Times

Urban policy experts and progressive activists have expressed intense concern that Carson, in keeping with his strong conservative positions, will seek to cut money for government assistance programs and wear down the social safety net. The Trump administration has recently signaled that many government agencies can expect budget reductions in favor of increasing defense spending. — Washington Post

A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Shermichael Singleton, who was one of the few black conservatives in the Trump administration, had been working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development since Jan. 23 as a senior adviser. — the New York Times

IN ONE OF the first official acts of his presidency, Donald Trump has increased taxes on a million middle-class homebuyers.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development on Friday reversed a scheduled 0.25 percent cut in mortgage insurance premiums issued by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). For a mortgage worth $200,000, this adds $500 to a homebuyer’s annual costs.

These insurance fees are effectively a tax on middle-class homeownership. — The Intercept

If Carson wants to dramatically change the nature of HUD, all he needs to do is nothing — a course of action he seems temperamentally inclined to accept. Under Carson, HUD could stop enforcement of that "socialist" Fair Housing Act. It could stop prodding local governments to increase access to homes. It could look the other way when local ordinances sequester government-mandated affordable housing away from those with enough pull to say "not in my backyard." — mtv.com

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has offered the post of secretary of housing and urban development to former presidential candidate Ben Carson, who will consider it over the Thanksgiving holiday, a Carson spokesman said on Tuesday.

"The president-elected asked him to consider it and he's considering it," Carson spokesman Armstrong Williams said. Carson, a retired surgeon, dropped out of the 2016 presidential race in March and backed Trump. — Reuters

In new guidance, released Monday, HUD tells landlords and home sellers that turning down tenants or buyers based on their criminal records may violate the Fair Housing Act.

People with criminal records aren't a protected class under the Fair Housing Act... but blanket policies of refusing to rent to anybody with a criminal record are de facto discrimination, the department says — because of the systemic disparities of the American criminal justice system. — NPR