REALLY?

One in Three at HUD Lack Housing Policy Background: Report

Five of those staffers received promotions and raises in their first months on the job.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has promoted and increased the pay of five staffers with no housing-policy experience in their first months on the job, according to a Thursday report from The Washington Post. All of the raises, the Post notes, were given to staffers who formerly worked on either President Trump or HUD Secretary Ben Carson’s presidential campaigns, and resulted in salaries between $98,000 and $155,000. These employees are only a few of the 24 staffers in high-level positions at the department with no housing-policy experience. That includes Carson, the Post notes, who had no “prior housing, executive or government background” before accepting this role. “This administration is different, because the people coming in really don’t know housing at all,” Ron Ashford, former director of HUD’s public-housing supportive-service programs, told the Post. “As a result, they’re pursuing initiatives that aren’t grounded in reality.”