Eric Scott Turner, nominee for secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, testifies at his confirmation hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, on Jan. 16, 2025. (Screenshot from committee webcast)

WASHINGTON — Senators pressed Department of Housing and Urban Development nominee Eric Scott Turner on how he would tackle housing affordability and homelessness during a Thursday confirmation hearing.

“As a country, we’re not building enough housing,” Turner said in his opening statement. “We need millions more homes of all kinds, single family, apartments, condos, duplexes, manufactured housing, you name it, so individuals and families can have a roof over their heads and a place to call home.”

HUD is a roughly $68 billion agency that provides rental assistance, builds and preserves affordable housing, addresses homelessness and enforces the Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in housing.

Turner said his main goal as HUD secretary would be to tackle the housing shortage and to increase the housing supply of affordable homes, as well as end remote work for HUD employees.

The U.S. Office of Government Ethics has not made his public financial disclosure available yet.

During the first Trump administration, Turner worked with then-HUD Secretary Ben Carson on so-called Opportunity Zones, which were part of the 2017 law that provided tax breaks for investors who put money into designated low-income areas, though it was mainly for commercial real estate.

Turner is a former NFL player and served two terms in the Texas Legislature until 2017.

Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen said he is glad that building affordable housing will be a priority for Turner, but raised concerns about Trump’s plans to raise tariffs.

Turner said that he knows keeping the cost of building materials is important, but ultimately tariffs are up to Trump.

“What I want to do is combat anything that raises the cost of housing, be it the cost of construction, be it fees, regulatory burdens,” Turner said. “That’s what I’m focused on.”

Cutbacks in programs

Senate Democrats like Tina Smith of Minnesota, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada raised concerns about certain HUD programs that incoming President-elect Donald Trump targeted during his first term in office. 

Cortez Masto said Trump tried to limit and cut programs that supported construction of affordable housing.

Trump in a budget request to Congress called for cutting housing programs such as the Community Development Block Grant, which directs funding to local and state governments to rehabilitate and build affordable housing.

She asked Turner if he would take the same approach.

“My goal… is to look at all of the programs within HUD and see what is successful, and what’s not successful,” he said, adding that he would advocate to the president which programs are working. 

Cortez Masto asked if Turner had a position on housing vouchers. He said he’s still learning about them, along with other programs HUD manages.

“One thing I do know is we need to make it less cumbersome, and more efficient in the process, and make it easier for landowners and landlords to work with us instead of putting a lot of bureaucracy and red tape and burden on them,” he said.

Freshman GOP. Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio blamed the shortage of housing on immigrants who entered the country without proper authorization, and asked Turner how he thought they played into homelessness.

Turner cited HUD’s annual homelessness report released in December. In that report, the agency found that a record number of people were experiencing homelessness due to natural disasters, new immigrants arriving in the United States, the end of an eviction moratorium put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic and the end of the expanded child tax credit.

“It noted that illegal migration, you know illegal immigration, has caused a lot of the homelessness in our country,” Turner said. “It’s going to be a great burden on the economy, on housing, on homelessness, on health, in our country.”

Mixed status families

Freshman Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, said in his state it’s very common to have mixed status families, meaning family members with different immigration and citizenship statuses.

Gallego said during the first Trump administration, HUD tried through a rulemaking process to limit housing assistance to mixed status families. He asked Turner if families with one member who is an undocumented immigrant would be evicted from federal housing.

“We have to take care of American citizens and American families. It’s not only the right thing to do, it’s not what we’re just called to do, it’s the law,” he said. “My job would be to uphold the laws on the books.”

Only U.S. citizens have access to federal housing, and there is no HUD regulation that bars mixed status families from receiving federal assistance. The Biden administration rescinded the rulemaking process in 2021 started during the first Trump administration that tried to make mixed status families ineligible for federal housing assistance.

“I know oftentimes we have to make hard decisions because we do not like to tear up families, but we have an obligation to serve the American people and uphold the laws on the books,” Turner said.

Gallego said when it comes to mixed status families, “these are American people, they’re just in a situation where they’re married to someone who is undocumented.”

“This is why I’m asking specifically, to make sure that you understand that there is a nuance, and all we’re gonna do is create more Americans that are actually going to be homeless if we rush to just (do) evictions,” Gallego said. 

A worker saws wood at Canal Crossing, a new luxury apartment community consisting of 393 rental units near the university city of New Haven on Aug. 2, 2017 in Hamden, Connecticut. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump late Friday announced his intent to nominate former NFL player and Texas state lawmaker Scott Turner to lead the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Scott will work alongside me to Make America Great Again for EVERY American,” Trump said in a statement.

Turner, if confirmed by the Senate, will administer a roughly $68 billion agency that provides rental assistance, builds and preserves affordable housing, addresses homelessness and enforces the Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in housing.

Turner has some experience with housing. During the first Trump administration, he worked with then-HUD Secretary Ben Carson on Opportunity Zones, which were part of the 2017 law that provided tax breaks for investors who put money into designated low-income areas.

“Those efforts, working together with former HUD Secretary, Ben Carson, were maximized by Scott’s guidance in overseeing 16 Federal Agencies which implemented more than 200 policy actions furthering Economic Development,” Trump said. “Under Scott’s leadership, Opportunity Zones received over $50 Billion Dollars in Private Investment!”

Turner will be tasked with addressing the housing shortage of about 3.8 million homes for sale and rent, according to 2021 estimates from Freddie Mac that are still relied upon. Homelessness has also hit a record high of 653,100 people since January of last year, according to a study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

While on the campaign trail, Trump proposed opening up federal lands for housing, which would mean selling the land for construction purposes with the commitment for a certain percentage of the units to be kept for affordable housing. The federal government owns about 650 million acres of land, or roughly 30% of all land.

Trump has also opposed building multi-family housing, and has instead favored single-family zoning and while such land-use regulation is controlled on the local level, the federal government could influence it.

During Trump’s first term, he proposed slashing many of HUD’s programs, although those requests were not granted by Congress. However, for his second term he’ll have control of both chambers.

In all of Trump’s budget requests, he laid out proposals that would increase rent by 40% for about 4 million low-income households using rental vouchers or for those who lived in public housing, according to an analysis by the left-leaning think tank the Brookings Institution.

Trump also called for cutting housing programs such as the Community Development Block Grant, which directs funding to local and state governments to rehabilitate and build affordable housing.

The former president’s budget requests also would have slashed the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, known as LIHEAP, which assists low-income families.