Given that the guy running the place is a former neurosurgeon with no housing, executive, or government experience who thinks poverty is “a state of mind,” you might expect the Department of Housing and Urban Development, under Ben Carson’s stewardship, to place less of an emphasis on employees having a clue what they’re doing than in times past. And, as it turns out, you would expect correctly!

According to an investigation by The Washington Post, at least 24 people hired at the agency since Donald Trump’s inauguration have zero housing-policy experience, with 16 seemingly given high-paying positions because they worked on either Trump’s or Carson’s presidential campaigns. Among them, five extra lucky individuals are political operatives who’ve enjoyed promotions and pay hikes, three of whom “did not list bachelor’s degrees on their résumés.” But what these people lack in relevant experience, they’ve made up for in hamstringing the department’s ability to serve the needs of low-income families:

The lack of experience in a chronically understaffed agency brought even routine work to a halt for much of Carson’s first year at HUD because none of the appointees felt comfortable signing off on grants and technical guidance, according to career staffers.

“There’s a huge learning curve getting leadership up to the point where they are willing to make a decision on something because they just don’t understand the concepts,” said a longtime career staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retaliation.

In addition to bringing normal functions to a grinding halt, appointees’ lack of experience—and in some cases, complete contempt for the mission of the agency—has led to them “pursuing initiatives that aren’t grounded in reality,” according to Ron Ashford, who served as director of HUD’s public-housing supportive-service programs for 22 years. One of those initiatives was a proposal in April to triple the minimum rent paid by the nation‘s poorest families, and to make it easier for housing authorities to enforce stricter work requirements for people receiving government benefits. The plan, according to the Post, was driven by special policy adviser Ben Hobbs, who has “no experience as a policymaker,” but spent five months studying as a “poverty consultant” at the Charles Koch Institute in 2013. Luckily, Hobbs’s total lack of know-how resulted in HUD backing off the proposal just two months later. “As an ideologue, he wanted to institute his grandiose concept,” said a former HUD official. “This policy was dead on arrival because it was rolled out poorly.”

Elsewhere, a conservative commentator and software developer turned senior adviser to Carson—who spread a conspiracy theory on Twitter that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman had taken part in a satanic ritual—is reportedly pulling down a cool $131,767 a year, despite having zero housing experience and a belief that government benefits hurt the poor. In a statement, a spokesman for HUD—which did not dispute the Post’s salary findings—said that appointing people with “varying experiences to government is not unusual” and makes HUD a “more dynamic organization.”