When Ben Carson took the position of U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, he had plans to implement programs that would empower low-income Americans to become less dependent on HUD-assisted housing and more self-sufficient.
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Nearly a year to the date since his swearing in, and these plans have yet to take shape and still have little funding to back them, the New York Times reports.
One such program was Carson's proposal to establish 3,000 EnVision Centers within three to five years. The centers would provide education, job training, mentorship and healthcare services to low-income families in order to help them better their situations, according to the NYT. The EnVision Center project received a two-year, $2M commitment from the White House, and while Carson has looked to charitable foundations to secure more capital, the effort was short-lived.
A series of events have contributed to the holdup, according to the Times, such as indecision, staff errors, an inability to convince HUD staff that self-sufficiency is a better way to aid the poor and indifference on the part of President Donald Trump.
While some have attributed these disappointments to Carson's lack of influence in the White House, Carson has cast some of the blame on the complexity of the job, saying in a recent interview that “there are more complexities here than in brain surgery.”
Carson also came under fire recently for skipping out of a roundtable discussion with housing leaders in Chicago and for involving his son in meetings held in Baltimore, despite having been warned against doing so by HUD lawyers.
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