Scott Turner
Announced as Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Scott Turner is Trump’s pick for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Turner served as Executive Director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, which was established by executive order in December 2018 and chaired by Ben Carson. While the Opportunity Zones program was intended to spur investment in economically distressed areas, instead it provided substantial tax benefits to affluent investors for projects in already-developing or affluent areas. For example, ProPublica has reported that Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank received tax breaks for investments in Baltimore that were not new and not in a poor tract.
Turner has referred to Carson as his “mentor”, and, following the first Trump administration, Turner became a board member of Carson’s American Cornerstone Institute (ACI). Incubated by Jim Demint’s Conservative Partnership Institutie, ACI supplies “pro-America, pro-faith, pro-life, and pro-family” materials to fight the left’s saturation of “America’s schools and the media with their own twisted lessons about America, faith, gender, and sexuality.” ACI is a Project 2025 advisory board member, and Carson authored the HUD chapter. Turner is also Chair of the Center for Education Opportunity at the MAGA think tank America First Policy Institute (AFPI), a right-wing group formed in 2021 by Linda McMahon (Trump’s pick for Education Secretary), Brooke Rollins (Trump’s pick for Secretary of Agriculture), and oil and gas billionaire Tim Dunn to, per NYT, “lay the groundwork for a second Trump administration”
Turner expressed being “thrilled to continue the outstanding work [that] began in [Trump’s] last administration at HUD.” According to the Economist “the governing principle at HUD is to take whatever the Obama administration was doing, and do the opposite.” Under Carson’s leadership, Trump’s HUD:
– Supported budget cuts that reduced aid to vulnerable populations
– Obstructed an investigation into its own delay in providing congressionally mandated federal aid to Puerto Rico after the deadly 2017 Hurricane Maria.
– Proposed massive cuts to federal affordable housing programs, as well as other essential programs that ensure basic living standards for low-income Americans.
– Proposed reducing housing benefits by increasing rents
– Imposed stricter work requirements on those who receive federal housing assistance.
– Revised an existing HUD rule to make it harder to prove discrimination in housing.
– Suspended a plan that would have cut mortgage insurance premiums on federally insured home loans. The U.S. government estimated the plan was expected to save eligible homeowners an average of $500 per year.
– In 2019, the Trump Administration also released its first formal plan to overhaul the housing finance system and remove Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from government conservatorship.
Turner is a culture war-oriented speaker and spoke at at least one Trump campaign event. On an AFPI panel on applying biblical principles to public policy, Turner asserted, “We’ve lost sight of who we are. And we have to remember that we are the United States of America founded on biblical foundation […] I believe that as a country, starting with the pastors and faith leaders and political leaders, if you will, that if we restore our faith, our trust, and vow to be to Jesus and get our vision back on who we really are as a country […] that we will be the America that we are called to be.”
During his tenure as Board Member at ACI, the organization signed onto a coalition letter, featuring numerous religious right and Leonard Leo-tied organizations opposing Kentanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. The letter claimed that “Roe not only denigrates our legal system, but also authorizes our nation’s radical policy of abortion on demand until birth.” ACI filed amicus briefs in Dobbs v. Jackson, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District.
Turner is a former professional football player for the NFL who entered politics in 2003 interning for a California Republican Congressman. He briefly returned to the NFL, but a leg injury ended his career in 2004. Turner eventually sought a statehouse seat as a Republican in Texas accepting campaign contributions from oil and gas companies and endorsements from the National Rifle Association and Texas Right to Life Committee and served as a state representative from 2013 to 2017.
WHAT DOES PROJECT 2025 SAY ABOUT HOUSING?
THE POLICIES
– Increase the mortgage insurance premium on all products with above 20-year terms.
– Privatize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac increasing mortgage costs for homeowners.
– Restrict the role of the Federal Reserve in stabilizing the economy during housing and other economic crises.
– Allow public land and housing to be sold to the private market “and put to greater economic use.”
– Immediately end the Biden Administration’s PAVE policies, a set of guidelines that remove racial and ethnic biases from home appraisals.
– Repeal the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation, increasing barriers to federally funded housing for protected and underrepresented groups.
– Eliminate the Housing Supply Fund, which provides grants to states and localities to reduce affordable housing barriers.
– End the supposed “anti-marriage bias” in housing assistance programs, designing programs to instead benefit couples most.
HOW ARE PROJECT 2025’S POLICIES POSSIBLE?
– The Trump Administration could use the rulemaking process to repeal Biden Administration regulations, such as the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, and replace them with its own policies.
– Congress holds the authority to wind down and privatize Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae because Congress originally established both agencies in statute, and because they are in conservatorship, the executive branch has significant power over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and can effectively privatize them by releasing them from conservatorship.