Story highlights Donald Trump has tapped Trump family's wedding and event planner to oversee NY and NJ federal urban housing programs

Errol Louis: By picking spectacularly unqualified Lynne Patton, Trump gambles with housing needs of hundreds of thousands

Errol Louis is the host of "Inside City Hall," a nightly political show on NY1, a New York all-news channel. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.

(CNN) According to a report in the New York Daily News, Donald Trump has appointed the spectacularly unqualified Lynne Patton to run the Region II office of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which covers New York and New Jersey -- thus confirming the Trump administration's haphazard treatment of the problems facing American cities.

Patton, who has been an event planner and personal aide to members of the Trump family (she planned Eric Trump's wedding), has no experience in housing or urban development. She will now be tasked with coordinating the flow of billions of federal dollars into New York City, Newark, Trenton and other troubled urban centers.

Her portfolio will include the nation's largest public housing authority, home to more than half a million people, and the country's largest Section 8 program, which provides subsidies to tens of thousands of low-income renters.

It remains unclear, to say the least, how well those responsibilities will be shouldered by a woman whose main credential appears to be her years of service to the Trump family. Patton's online LinkedIn biography describes her job as working for Eric Trump, Donald Trump, Jr. and Ivanka Trump, and "handling all calendar appointments, scheduling, media appearances, travel, expenses, purchases, event coordination, contact/engagements, as well as home & business responsibilities."

It did not help matters that, on a recent surprise visit to the New York City Housing Authority, Patton disappointed local officials by declining to actually enter a housing authority apartment. That echoes a similar decision by her boss, HUD Secretary Ben Carson, to avoid visiting city projects that rely on HUD funds.