Donald Trump picks son's wedding planner to run New York federal housing programme
Lynne Patton is thought to have no experience in property administration
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Your support makes all the difference.A wedding planner who coordinated the big day for Donald Trump''s son Eric, has been selected to run the main federal housing programme in New York.
Lynne Patton is thought to have no experience in housing administration, but she will now be in charge of distributing billions of dollars of funding across the state area as head of the New York branch of the US Department of Housing.
Ms Patton has had close ties to the Trump family for the past eight years and previously arranged celebrity golf tournaments at the president’s various courses.
According to her Linkedin page Ms Patton has served as vice president at the Eric Trump Foundation, which is currently under investigation for fraud, since 2011 and was a senior advisor on the presidential campaign last year.
In her role as the family’s event planner for several years, she organised Eric’s wedding ceremony at Mar-a-Lago in November 2014 as he married Lara Yunaska.
As head of the largest regional housing office in the US, Ms Patton be in charge of distributing tens of thousands of rental vouchers and blocking grants that fund housing inspections and senior citizen programmes, the New York Daily News reported.
In May last year Ms Patton, who is African American, said her important position within Mr Trump’s inner circle was “clear proof that he is not a bigot or a misogynist”.
Nearly 70 per cent of the New York Housing Authority operational budget and 100 per cent of its repair budget comes from the organisation Ms Patton will lead.
The authority’s ageing buildings need an estimated $17 billion (£13.3 billion) in upgrades over the coming years.
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