It may come as news to conservatives, but rising Democratic star and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro faces allegations that he is not sufficiently progressive.

Castro has pushed an ambitious plan to disburse urban poverty by strong-arming affluent communities into accepting low-income housing.

The former San Antonio mayor, widely thought to be on Democrat Hillary Clinton’s short list as a vice presidential contender, has pushed an ambitious plan as HUD chief to disburse urban poverty by strong-arming affluent communities into accepting low-income housing, and has championed LGBT rights. But that is apparently not good enough for liberal activists upset by HUD’s “Wall Street giveaway,” their pejorative description of a program to clear bad mortgages on its books.

“HUD is supposed to help homeowners stay in their home through its ‘Distressed Asset Stabilization Program,'” reads a statement on a website called dontsellourhomestowallstreet.org. “But instead it has been a giveaway for Wall Street.”

Under the initiative, the agency holds periodic auctions of “severely delinquent” mortgages. The next one is scheduled for Wednesday. The program has been under fire from the left for months. Liberal firebrand Elizabeth Warren, a Democratic senator from Massachusetts, blasted the program during a rally in September.

“These Wall Street investors made money by crashing the economy, got bailed out and now they’re back to feed at the trough again, scooping up these loans at rock-bottom prices so that they profit off them a second time — and it is up to us to stop that!” she said at the time.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, sent a pointed letter to Castro earlier this year.

“Your own Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, which was designed to help right the wrongs of the meltdown years, has been selling homes that once belonged to the families I’ve spoken with at rock-bottom prices to the Wall Street entities that created this situation in the first place,” he wrote, according to Politico.

Castro has promised to unveil changes this week in the way DASP operates. HUD officials denied that vice presidential politics played a role.

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“It has always been our goal to get the policy right, regardless of arbitrary deadlines, and we expect to announce those changes this week,” HUD press secretary Cameron French told Politico.

Critics expressed skepticism, however. America Rising, a political action committee that conducts opposition research on Democrats, said on its website that Castro is trying to calm liberal activists whose hopes have been raised by the socialist candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“One of Hillary Clinton’s biggest liabilities is the feeling among the American people that she has used government service to personally benefit herself,” the group said on its website. “While Castro might be happy that he’s solved this problem, a Clinton-Castro ticket would now carry even more serious liabilities.”

Under DASP, tens of thousands of mortgages have been sold. Although purportedly designed to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, the mortgages sold for as little as 41 percent of their value — and only 16.9 percent of the mortgages avoided foreclosures, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

Liberal critics contend that poor people are losing their homes while Wall Street financial companies gobble up 98 percent of the homes sold under the program, although HUD officials dispute that figure.

According to Politico, the Federal Housing Authority will modify the program to require that investors offer principal reduction for occupied loans and create a “walk-away prohibition” to block buyers of single-family mortgages from abandoning lower-value properties.

So far, liberal activists seem pleased but want more information.

“I would say we’re cautiously optimistic, but we don’t know – and what we need to see is a plan that will lead to substantially more mortgages not getting into the hands of bad actors and saving more homes from foreclosure,” Amy Schur, campaign director for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, told Politico.