WASHINGTON — Ben Carson, the nominee for secretary of housing and urban development, presented himself on Thursday as a credible manager for a sprawling federal bureaucracy, navigating an unlikely transition from celebrated neurosurgeon and genial conservative presidential candidate to the steward of American housing policy.

At a Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Carson, 65, strained at times to square his past remarks on the dangers of federal assistance — he once called poverty “really more of a choice than anything else” — with the mission of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an agency with a $47 billion budget and a mandate to help millions of low-income renters and struggling homeowners.

Forgoing many specifics, he laid out a vision of a more “holistic” approach: recruiting private sector dollars and seeking to end what he called a cycle of “generation after generation of people living in dependent situations.”

“Safety net programs are important. I would never advocate abolishing them without having an alternative for people to follow,” he said, adding that “some have distorted what I’ve said about government.”