Former Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for New York City’s mayor, drastically underestimated the cost of a Brooklyn home.
Donovan claimed in a New York Times editorial board interview that a home in Brooklyn costs “around $100,000.” Editorial Board member Mara Gay then corrected him, noting a real estate website’s calculation that Brooklyn’s median home price is around $900,000.
Former HUD Secretary and mayoral candidate Shaun Donovan pic.twitter.com/RO5dW4VYhh
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) May 11, 2021
The average price of a single family home in Brooklyn is $768,000, according to Zillow.
A spokesman for Donovan emailed the Times after the interview, saying that he misunderstood the question and believed it to be about the assessed prices of Brooklyn houses.
Ray McGuire, who is also running in the Democratic primary, told the New York Times that he believed the cost of a Brooklyn home is between $80,000 and $90,000.
Donovan is currently polling in fourth place in the Democratic primary, with eight percent support. (RELATED: 7 Democratic NYC Mayoral Candidates Said They Wouldn’t Accept Bill De Blasio’s Endorsement)
Donovan served as HUD Secretary from 2009-2014 under former President Barack Obama. He then went on to serve as Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). He was criticized during his tenure at HUD by left wing Democrats and Republicans alike for his handling of the subprime mortgage crisis. Nearly ten million Americans lost their homes between 2006 and 2014, after banks offered them mortgage contracts that they could not afford to pay off.
After Donovan moved to OMB, an inspector general found that he managed HUD’s records so poorly that the agency was in violation of record keeping laws.