Democrats and housing advocates have little idea what to expect from Scott Turner, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development in his second administration.
Turner, best known for being a former NFL player, hasn’t done any high-profile media interviews since Trump announced in November he would be his pick for the role. As other would-be cabinet picks have attracted plenty of buzz on Capitol Hill, Turner visited the Capitol in December, meeting with about a dozen senators but attracting far less attention. Turner’s relatively quiet public presence has left Democratic members of Congress and housing advocates struggling to figure out what to expect from him.
“I don’t know him. I have never heard his name mentioned previously. I have a vague recollection of him playing football,” said Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who serves on the House Financial Services Housing and Insurance subcommittee. “I would just like to know what his theology of housing is.”
Sarah Saadian, vice president of public policy and field organizing for National Low Income Housing Coalition, which works to support affordable housing, said advocates have many questions about Turner and if he would continue the “harmful” policies of Trump’s first administration.
“My assumption is that Scott Turner might pursue the same sort of policies we saw during the first [Trump] term, but we’re waiting for that confirmation hearing so that we can see straight from Scott Turner what he wants to prioritize,” Saadian told NOTUS.
Turner’s confirmation hearing is scheduled for Jan. 16. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment.
While Turner has had a fairly quiet few weeks since Trump’s announcement, there are some hints about what his positions on housing policy might be, particularly from his stint in the Texas House of Representatives from 2013 to 2017. His voting record is getting close scrutiny now.
ProPublica reported that during his time in the Texas state House, Turner opposed initiatives that aided poor communities, including a vote against expanding partnerships to support homeless people and against supporting foreclosure prevention programs.
Turner, who is listed as chair of the Center for Education Opportunity at the America First Policy Institute, a think tank closely associated with Trump and his circle, served in Trump’s first administration as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council. During this time, he oversaw Trump’s opportunity zone initiatives, which were part of Republicans’ 2017 tax legislation and offered incentives to developers in low-income communities.
Some housing advocates are looking at Project 2025 for ideas of what the second Trump administration may prioritize at HUD. The Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump administration outlines an overhaul of the department, including proposals to delegate agency responsibilities to state and local governments, to target undocumented immigrants through public housing and to make it harder to qualify for housing benefits.
The Heritage Foundation declined to comment about whether any of its advisers have been in touch with Turner. Project 2025’s chapter on housing was written by Trump’s former HUD secretary, Ben Carson, who Turner has called “a mentor.”
“There are lots of bad ideas for housing in Project 2025, but it’s unclear which of those [the Trump administration] will try and implement,” Kevin DeGood, director of infrastructure policy at the Center for American Progress, said in an email to NOTUS.
John Trasviña, who served as an assistant HUD secretary in Barack Obama’s administration, said he was hoping HUD would remain out of the spotlight and not get much of Trump’s attention.
“Currently, he’s spending more time talking about Greenland, Panama and Canada than he is talking about the concerns in our cities: homelessness, affordable housing, civil rights — those three things are the key for HUD. … [It’s] the core of what HUD does,” Trasviña said. “It’s not on Trump’s radar screen at all. I did not hear one word about any of that during the campaign.”In the past, the Trump administration has tried to pursue some of its priorities through HUD.
In 2019, it tried to halt financial assistance to undocumented migrants through HUD, proposing a rule that would have ended support for mixed-immigration status households. The rule would have threatened housing for 25,000 mixed-status families, including more than 55,000 children who were U.S. citizens or green card holders, based on a HUD analysis.
The Trump administration also proposed a rule allowing federally funded single-sex homeless shelters to turn away transgender people, who are disproportionately affected by homelessness, the same year. Both proposals were withdrawn by the Biden administration.
Noel Andrés Poyo, an executive vice president at Housing Partnership Network, said he doesn’t necessarily believe Trump’s first term offers a blueprint to his second term.
“Housing is in a different place today than it has been in the past. From a policy perspective, like there is the visceral housing crisis impacting well over half the population,” Poyo said. “And so that is not what the first Trump administration, I think, was hearing and feeling.”
Susan Popkin, a fellow at the Urban Institute, said Turner’s nomination to the role came as a surprise, adding that she’d “never heard of him before.”
“I’d like to learn what his position is on affordable housing, his position on the homeless [and] addressing the needs of people who are unhoused, how he’s going to address the crisis in homelessness … I would like to hear him talk about what we’re going to do about disaster housing,” Popkin told NOTUS.
Housing issues are expansive: Homelessness is up 18% from last year, according to HUD’s 2024 count. Homeowners and renters alike are struggling to find affordable housing.
Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, a Democrat who co-chairs the Congressional Caucus on Homelessness, said she’s hearing affordable housing concerns from every corner of her district.
“Instead of supporting efforts to build more affordable apartments, [Turner] opposed them and called government assistance ‘one of the most destructive things for the family,’” Bonamici said in a statement to NOTUS. “If Mr. Turner does become HUD secretary in the Trump Administration, I truly hope he will change his tune.”
—
Amelia Benavides-Colón is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.