Ben Carson was nominated secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Monday and his appointment will be debated endlessly over the coming months, with critics quickly honing in on his lack of housing policy and government experience. No matter, though; the naysayers need not stop him from doing an excellent job as HUD’s top administrator. The job can be done well if the following ideas remain front and center.
High-cost housing is a product of government regulation
Carson would be wise to remind everyone that cities do have control over sky-high housing prices: in fact, if cities relax zoning and land use regulations and simplify developer approval processes they can decrease the cost of housing across the board, no exceptions. Zoning regulations are the real culprit in places like Manhattan, where research demonstrates that regulations price the poor, the young, and the unestablished out of high opportunity areas. Local regulation also hampers innovation in the housing market, just look at the sad demise of low-cost micro-housing in Seattle.
HUD is not the nation’s urban planner
We can be quite certain that Carson will move away from the social-engineering-of-cities model advanced under HUD Secretary Julian Castro. Specifically, Carson should dig his heels in on the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule promulgated last year, a rule that allows HUD to oversee where people live locally based on their race. Fortunately, Carson has voiced opposition to the rule, and President-Elect Trump agrees, so it seems that Carson may have the support that he needs to remind the agency that not every local municipality’s land use and zoning regulations are under HUD’s jurisdiction.