Is Now Really the Time to Cut HUD Funds for Renters?

Ben Carson's recent (paraphrased) comments in Time magazine, during which he called the rental assistance program at HUD something along the lines of "part of 'damaging status quo,'" did not go over particularly well at the Urban Institute. (These were not actually Carson's words, but they were his ideas.)

Assisting low-income Americans with rent is neither damaging nor necessarily the status quo, according to the authors, who point out most of the money goes to the elderly and disabled while, "[a]t the median, households headed by a working-age, nondisabled person receive rental assistance from HUD for less than three years."

Carson's thoughts on rental assistance are fairly critical, given that 84 percent of HUD's budget is dedicated to helping people pay rent, and that paying rent is a primary concern of an enormous number of Americans, particularly at this moment.  

"In the middle of a housing crisis,” the authors write, “now is the worst time for HUD to cut funding and reverse policy reforms that hold great promise for reducing dependency by breaking the cycle of instability and poverty. “