NY should worry about social service cuts in Trump era

New York

FOR the last several weeks, discussions of the ways a Trump presidency will affect life in New York City have revolved largely around questions of inconvenience, when they might have been better cast as questions of sustainability. Congestion in Midtown will seem like a board-game problem if fears about drastic federal cuts to social services are borne out, at a time when New York, like other major cities, faces a growing homelessness crisis.

Conveniently, Donald Trump's naming of Ben Carson as his choice to run the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provides us with a vehicle in which we might drive closer to some of the more darkly imagined consequences.

Mr Carson, a neurosurgeon with no real policy experience, brings with him to the management of a US$50 billion agency intended to serve the poor a certain antipathy toward fair housing law, a distaste for "social engineering" and a belief that the poor are best served by their own gum…