Pete Buttigieg is liberalism’s new flavor of the month. From glowing write-ups in major magazines to articles documenting his music preferences and exquisite taste, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana has quickly established a national profile. Considerably less has been written thus far about Buttigieg’s tenure in the mayor’s office — something that just might tell us more about his beliefs and how he would actually govern than his penchant for wool socks and James Joyce.

As a Harvard-educated former consultant with McKinsey & Company, Buttigieg unsurprisingly brought a managerial ethos to his administration. On paper, this implied setting measurable goals, gathering data, speaking to experts, and making improvements to city life. In practice, however, it has often been less innocuous — as evidenced by the mayor’s approach to both housing and homelessness.

With 14 percent of the city’s housing vacated or abandoned, Buttigieg had a task force identify every relevant property and recommend an overall course of action. Its conclusion? That the city should slap fines on homeowners to incentivize repairs and empower officials to demolish derelict properties at the owner’s expense. But it just so happened that most of the vacant homes were in low-income black and Latino neighborhoods, where some city residents had housing from deceased relatives or were still listed as owners despite having been forced out by pricey mortgages.