A Conversation with Ben Carson, Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

well good morning mr. secretary and thank you for joining us today and thank you all for joining us here in the meeting this morning we're here to talk about an important issue of social determinants and but but most importantly how it relates to housing you've had a very interesting life starting I'll call it as a boy wonder in Detroit and taking you to Yale then to Michigan Medical School and then at age 33 being the youngest chief pediatric neurosurgeon in looking at those experiences that you had how would you say your experience if we start with the being a neurosurgeon impacts your ability and opportunities at HUD well you know you learn a lot of things in the fill of medicine and particularly in neurosurgery and particularly in an academic setting one of the very important things is learning how to use information to use data and evidence in order to make decisions and that's key and that means a lot in the world of science not so much in royal politics but a lot in the world of science and you also learn to be courageous because you know I have a fair amount of controversy in my medical career because I like to push the envelope you know things weren't exactly right why not look for a better way to do it and you know some people think that's being a hot dog when you go off and do something but so you learn to sort of put all of that in a background and just focus on what you're doing and you know many of the things that I was criticized for at some point are now standard practice but perhaps the most important thing is as a pediatric neurosurgeon I would frequently spend hours and hours sometimes operating all night long to try to give a little baby a second she life and most of the time we were successful only to find myself a few days later in a terrible dilemma because now frequently had to send them back into a horrible environment with rats and roaches and mold and lead and violence and he just didn't want to do it sometimes I would order extra tests so they could stay in the hospital extra day don't tell anybody how would that work but now you know I'm privileged to lead an agency that can actually do something about that well thank you so you have now been in government for about two years 18 months how have you enjoyed that experience in the transition from being actively involved in the medical profession every day enjoyment might not be the right word but it has been interesting let me put it that way you know I'm a anti bureaucrat you know I don't like bureaucrats because bureaucrats are people who think that the rules are more important than the goals and surgeons have a tendency to just want to get it done you know when in doubt cut it out you know you know there's this real tension there but it's been a very good transition actually because one of the things that surprised me the most is I was told you know coming in you'd have a lot of career people and they'd be all trying to torpedo everything that you're doing I've not found that to be the case at all you know particularly recognizing them as sources of tremendous information they've been around for 10 20 30 40 some will admit even longer than that period of time and really have a lot of in-depth knowledge and historical knowledge which is very helpful in helping to put some of the plan he's together and then I've been blessed with a number of people around me who have accomplished a lot in life maybe not in the area of housing but in other areas have become very successful and instead of just retiring and decided they want to give back and then we have many people who in that same category who have a lot of experience in housing so a combination of all those people together recognizing what the real goal here is which is not so much just putting people under a roof but really getting people out of poverty that's really the main reason that I'm here recognizing that there are some people who are elderly who are disabled you know we just need to take care of those people we have an obligation as a society to do that but there are a lot of people who are work able people who've sort of given up and just don't really see themselves as you know part of the American Dream now we need to re-establish that dream for them and not just tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps but give them some bootstraps and a ladder and a push and what would that look like well it looks like probably a good example there's something we call the HUD Vash program where we deal with homelessness amongst a veteran population you know 1% of our population protects the other 99% of us we really have an obligation to take care of them and yet there were a lot of homeless vets HUD provides the housing voucher and the VA provides the wraparound services if you give them just housing it doesn't work you're given just wraparound services that work for you put them both together since 2010 the number of homeless vets has been reduced by 50% and continues to go down with many cities proclaiming and into homelessness on a regular basis 66 of them so that's the same concept providing people not only housing but the kind of wraparound services that empower them educationally economically character and leadership health and wellness all of those things together are really what can propel a person in their society well thank you if we look at housing then is the foundation for health as a or a critical piece of that foundation yeah and and we look at the a lot of the research that would show the the linkage between neighborhoods and health outcomes what what are the next steps we need to be taking in in the communities to help improve the health of the individual and those communities yeah well you know most people spend about 70 percent of their time in their house so obviously if that's a healthy environment you know that's going to be helpful to them both in terms of their physical and mental health and particularly when we're talking about young people you know my whole professional career has been focused on young people and exposure to lead and by the way this happens to be national lead Prevention Week we ran from 21st to the 27th so it's a good time to be talking about absolutely you know the exposure can really damage the developing brain and we're not just talking about short-term consequences here we're talking about lifetime potential and you're also talking about the loss of human potential and you're talking about humongous medical costs so you know it is really incumbent them on us as a society that wants to be fiscally responsible you know to deal with lead conditions you know since 1978 it's been illegal to use lead-based paints but think about all the habitations that were formed before that time and particularly when you look at the ones that don't have any type of government oversight you know nobody's doing the remediation and those situations I did last week speak to about 200 pastors and community leaders to talk about maybe them adopting a block and just saying this will be our church project project to remediate this block in terms of that but also you know you look at things like mold and the tremendous amount of resources that we spend each year in asthma you know we need to be dealing with the mold prevention and and preventive measures what we really are starting to concentrate on now you know what kind of building materials tend to be mold resistant because we know we're going to continue to have moisture issues we're going to continue to have natural disasters things like that that bring about these conditions so why don't we start thinking more about the kind of materials that we use and and how we can print because it again we're looking at the long term and and that's the thing that's going to help to save us financially you know we're in a situation I hate to bring up finances but you have to be realistic you know 21 trillion dollar national debt and it continues to be a problem probably not a problem for me or you because we're going to be dead but real thanks okay a real big problem for our children for our grandchildren and in fact if we continue to accumulate debt at the rate that we're doing going right now the Year 2048 which is only 30 years from now every penny the government takes in will be used to service a debt you know that's unsustainable and you know I know we kind of live in a society now where we say well let's just deal with today and let's not worry about tomorrow but it wasn't always like that in our country Thomas Jefferson said it's immoral to still from the next generation he would have a stroke if he were here today and so you know we do have to to deal with those kinds of things as we think about you know how do we treat the various problems that the health problems and also getting back to the home let me go to the other extreme the elderly we spend sixty six billion dollars a year on injuries to people who've fallen in their homes you know we need to deal with those kinds of issues too so when we're talking about creating safe environments we're not just talking about mold and that we're talking about retrofitting or when we build things build them in a way that includes safety because we're to recognize that our population is aging it's the fastest-growing demographic is aging portion of our population so if you go back to Detroit again okay earlier this year you came up with a program pilot I believe called envision that has gotten some press and some comments on it but I'd like for you to share a little bit what was behind it what do you want to accomplish button and okay what can we expect yes well you know comes from the Bible proverbs 29:18 it says without a vision the people perish and we had a lot of people perishing and a lot of people who don't have a vision or they just don't see beyond where they are right now you know it was Helen Keller that said I would rather be without sight than without vision you just think about that and people who've kind of zoned out and they're just happy to be maintained and you know that's really not what America has been about or should be about so with the envision Centers wait first we started calling them vision centers but we figured everybody would think they were going to get glasses now they're common vision centres but the concept is we take all 23 federal agencies state and local take resources from all of those because they almost all have something that's focused on self-sufficiency and combine those with the private sector the philanthropic groups the private sector business group the faith-based organizations to provide the kind of wraparound services that I was talking about what with hud-vash and it's been amazing you know as as we've looked into this the kind of things that are available for instance DoD Department of Defense actually has a program where they will come into a multi-family dwelling and teach the elderly people their childcare and they can actually get child care certification so now instead of looking at Andy Griffin all day they can take here I like Andy Griffin by the way they can take care of their three neighbors children and their three neighbors are likely to be single moms whose formal education ended with that first baby who can now go back and get their GED their associate's degree their bachelor's degree become independent teach that to children so we can break these cycles if we don't break these cycles which are unsustainable we're doomed we have to use the brain that God gave us to start thinking into the future and what kind of things we haven't did and by the way you know the system that exists right now that elderly woman probably wouldn't want to do that because if her income goes up her rent goes up you know we have these ridiculous things we're in the process of disassembling all that but I don't know who put that stuff together and what they were thinking but anyway we we want to have systems in place that actually encourage people to make more money that encourage people to get married to bring someone else into the environment you know those those are the kinds of things that work you know when it comes to poverty there was a study done by the Brookings Institute on poverty it's a broad-ranging study they concluded that there were three things that a person could do that would reduce their risk of living and poverty to 2% or less think about that number one finish high school number two get married number three wait until you're married to have children yeah what if we incorporated some of those ideals into some of the policies that encourage those kinds of things rather than discourage them I think we'd see a lot less poverty going on indeed if so taking it a step further and we're looking at the sort of infrastructure of housing the health issues related to housing what role do you think both well community and social health workers and the faith-based leaders can play and helping to improve health well I think they play a tremendous role because you know particularly when we're looking at a lot of the elderly you know there was a time in our country when you know we took care of our parents but that time seems to be fading and we have a lot of elderly people who you know I thought that they would be able to take care of themselves but you know people are living long period of time now you know if you go back to the previous turn of the century the average age of death was under 50 and now we're approaching 80 and you know there are a lot of things that we haven't done to adjust to that that's a whole other conversation but you know people's 401ks until recently really weren't accumulating anything so you know people find themselves in a position of being at an age where they probably should be thinking about retirement but a financial situation that really doesn't let them go but eventually they have to go because they just they're gonna be so old they can't you know I mean that's just way this I that by the way is one of the reasons that we see so much Alzheimer's people used to die before that time but now you know they're getting much older but one of the things this community works workers can do is help these people with the kinds of services that they need and health workers when you incorporate them into the communities so that people don't have to go somewhere just bring them right there I've visited a lot of places around the country that have nurse practitioners have pas that actually come in and do things for the elderly population there they're much happier under those circumstances that can also facilitate their transportation when in fact that is necessary those are the kinds of things that bring quality of life also you know we need to be thinking about how we build things appropriately so that people can share I was recently at a elderly development where you had your own bedroom your own bathroom but there was a common shared space and this is very nice because it helps to facilitate the interactions because what happens is people get isolated and you know studies have shown that those people are much more prone to dementia and things like that so you know we need to be thinking both in terms of what's healthy for them and what's convenient for them and what is economically feasible for us as a society well thank you we have time for one more question so I'm since I'm running the clock and sort of it's we started the inning before the hour and a half went up so I get the question and this is the future of Health Summit so let's take a look at 2025 what two three changes or significant improvements do you see being made between now and then that improves the health of individuals and communities including their housing well I think one of the real key things here is a much greater emphasis on public-private partnerships because there's a lot more money in the private sector than there is in the government and so what government needs to be working on is creating the win-win situations so that you know people can do well while at the same time being a positive influence on the society things like the opportunity zones which are coming up and looking at economically depressed areas and providing people with an opportunity with a long term investment of their capital gains that have been realized to make even more money but at the same time to help us to improve these situation you know that is going to be absolutely key if we can encounter the way that we think the way the government thinks and the way the society thinks I think we're going to be much better off also building holistic communities you know I look at for instance East lake side of Atlanta this was like the worst area in terms of poverty and crime educational attainment absolutely in the basement and you know they came in purpose planned communities redid the whole community now they have grocery stores to charter schools job training a beautiful mixed income housing a golf course it was pretty nice I gotta admit and you know I went into the charter high school I was met by five students playing the harp and I think all the things that they have available to them their schools are achieving at the highest level and the state better than the private schools you know these are things that we can do if we plan these communities out the right way and there are more of them around the country so you know that's the kind of thing if we can stop fighting each other and you know just you know that's that that's a whole nother pet peeve of mine you know we got so much going on for us in this country there's nobody who can take us down except ourselves you know we got to stop being so stupid and falling for this stuff and and just focus on our problems you know you can take the most radical left-wing person the most radical right-wing person probably 90% of stuff they agree on but we allow people to take that 10% and exacerbate it and make it into something that that's all we can think about that's craziness that's idiocy somehow we've got to move away from that and and if we begin to do that focus on what our real problems are I am convinced that collectively we have the wisdom and then know how to get it done great well thank you very much secretary okay [Applause]

Channel: Milken Institute

Views: 7,086

Rating: 4.7979798 out of 5

Keywords: Milken, Institute, MIFHS, #MIFHS, Milken Institute, Health, Future of Health, Ben Carson, HUD, Housing, Urban Development

Id: -VGk42Sh4lI

Length: 23min 35sec (1415 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 23 2018