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In condemned remarks, HUD Secretary Ben Carson calls slaves “immigrants”

by Lynda Carson (tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com)
People have allegedly been around for the last 195,000 years or more, and slavery has existed since before written history. The slavery era insurance registry reveals a lot of information about slavery!
In condemned remarks, HUD Secretary Ben Carson calls slaves “immigrants”

By Lynda Carson - March 6, 2017

Oakland - Ben Carson, the new Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) claimed today that slaves were hard working immigrants who worked for less, in his first speech to HUD employees.

In a shocking remark about slaves that were brutally forced to come to America against their will, according to HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, "There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships," he said. "They too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land."

Similar remarks describing slaves as workers in a Texas school textbook reportedly refers to African-American slaves as workers, not as slaves who were brutally forced to work without pay.

People have allegedly been around for the last 195,000 years or more, and slavery has existed since before written history. The slavery era insurance registry reveals a lot of information about slavery. In late March 2007, respected criminal defense attorney Tony Serra sued the federal government over slave labor practices, and recently the GEO Group, a private prison company, has been reportedly sued over alleged unpaid labor practices by immigrants in prison.

HUD Secretary, Ben Carson’s remarks about slaves being immigrants were roundly condemned in the press and across the nation in the news. Ben Carson has made the news on other occasions as a direct result of some of his bizarre comments during his run for the White House, in a bid to be the president of the United States.

According to HUD, the Oakland Housing Authority has 13,422 federally subsidized housing units in it’s section 8 inventory, and 2,122 units in it’s low rent inventory, formerly known as public housing units.

San Francisco has 9,711 units in it’s section 8 subsidized housing inventory, and 3,756 units in it’s low rent inventory. San Francisco is in the process of privatizing more than 4,584 public housing units under the RAD program. South San Francisco has 80 units in it’s low rent inventory.

There are approximately 1.2 million households living in public housing units, managed by around 3,300 Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) across the nation.

Additionally, according to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), the Housing Choice Voucher Program (section 8 voucher program) assists more than 2.2 million low-income households across the nation including veterans, the chronically ill, elderly, blind and disabled.

The new HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, does not have experience with HUD, housing policy or mortgage policy experience, and he does not have any experience running a government agency, or local housing authority.

HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, presently leads subsidized renters and union employees into an uncertain future, and has been placed in charge of HUD during a long period of low morale for HUD’s union employees during 2016, and during 2013 and earlier. Additionally, Ben Carson, has been placed in charge of HUD during a period when it is lacking in enough staff to properly run the massive agency that is so important to the American public. Making matters worse, according to the Public Housing Authorities Directors Association (PHADA), HUD has not been giving our nation’s housing authorities enough money to operate the Housing Choice Voucher Program (a.k.a. section 8 program) properly, resulting in 140,000 section 8 vouchers being unused in part due to the lack of funding to administer the program.

HUD was established in 1965, and is a cabinet-level agency that is responsible for overseeing and implementing federal housing assistance programs for lower-income households. This includes a wide variety of programs, including public housing, the Housing Choice Voucher Program, the project-based section 8 rental housing program, FHA mortgage insurance programs, the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae), in addition to funding programs for homeless shelters, and other vital programs important to the American public. Since it’s inception HUD has been responsible for more than $1.655 trillion and it’s various programs according to the Committee on Financial Services.

President Donald Trump is presently calling for $54 billion in cuts to our nation’s federal non-defense programs, including cuts to HUD’s subsidized housing programs, on top of the massive budget cuts being called for by the Republicans in Congress.

As reported in Poor Magazine and the Indy Bay News Wire, tenant activists are presently urging low-income renters in HUD’s subsidized housing programs to contact their representatives to speak up in support of HUD’s subsidized housing programs. In addition to the $54 billion in budget cuts that Trump wants, additional massive budget cuts to the federal government are being proposed ranging from $6 trillion to $8.6 trillion, and to as much as over $10 trillion during the next ten years.

As the federal employees, including HUD employees, and HUD’s subsidized renters experience a state of panic regarding the future of HUD and it’s subsidized housing programs, the future seems very grim and uncertain under the fascist right-wing Trump regime, and the new Hud Secretary, Ben Carson.

Lynda Carson may be reached at tenantsrule [at] yahoo.com

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