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.