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TRUMP’S PICK TO LEAD FEDERAL HOUSING AGENCY HAS OPPOSED EFFORTS TO
AID THE POOR  
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Jesse Coburn and Andy Kroll
December 23, 2024
ProPublica
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_ As HUD secretary, Scott Turner would oversee billions in housing
aid, but as a Texas state legislator he voted against protections for
poor tenants and has called government assistance “one of the most
destructive things for the family.” _

Scott Turner and President Donald Trump in 2020 , Evan Vucci/AP

 

As Donald Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development, Scott Turner may soon oversee the nation’s
efforts to build affordable apartments, protect poor tenants and aid
the homeless. As a lawmaker in the Texas House of Representatives,
Turner voted against those very initiatives.

Turner supported a bill
[[link removed]] ensuring
landlords could refuse apartments to applicants because they received
federal housing assistance. He opposed a bill
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expand affordable rental housing. He voted against funding
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partnerships to support the homeless and against two
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that called
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to study homelessness among young people and veterans.

Behind those votes lay a deep-seated skepticism about the value of
government efforts to alleviate poverty, a skepticism that Turner has
voiced again and again. He has called welfare
[[link removed]] “dangerous,
harmful” and “one of the most destructive things for the
family.” When one interviewer said receiving government assistance
was keeping recipients in “bondage” of “a worse form to find
oneself in than slavery
[[link removed]],” Turner
agreed.

Such views would seemingly place Turner at odds with the core work of
HUD, a sprawling federal agency that serves as a backstop against
homelessness for millions of the nation’s poor, elderly and
disabled. With an annual discretionary budget of $72 billion, the
department provides rental assistance to 2 million families, oversees
the country’s 800,000 public housing units, fights housing
discrimination and segregation and provides support to the nation’s
650,000 homeless. If Turner’s record indicates how he will direct
the agency’s agenda, it is those clinging to the bottom of the
housing market who have the most to lose, researchers and advocates
said.

“It just doesn’t seem to me like this is someone who is at all
aligned with what the values of that agency should be,” said Cea
Weaver, director of the advocacy group Housing Justice for All.
“It’s a deregulatory agenda, and it’s an anti-poor people
agenda.”

Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project,
said Turner’s views, if translated into policy, could increase
homelessness. “If, at a fundamental level, you believe that people
getting assistance with their rent when they’re very poor and
struggling, if you think that’s actually dependence and a bad thing,
you’re going to try to undermine those programs,” he said.

One former colleague offered a more optimistic view of Turner’s
stewardship of HUD. “My sense of him is he will try to help
people,” said Richard Peña Raymond, a Democratic Texas House member
who served on a committee with Turner. “I do think he’ll do a good
job.”

Turner did not respond to detailed questions. A spokesperson for the
nominee said: “Of course ProPublica would try and paint a negative
picture of Mr. Turner before he is even given the opportunity to
testify. We would expect nothing less from a publication that solely
serves as a liberal mouthpiece.”

The Trump transition team and HUD did not respond to requests for
comment. Trump’s announcement of Turner’s nomination
[[link removed]] praised
him for “helping lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our
Country’s most distressed communities” as head of a White House
council that promoted opportunity zones, a plan to spur investment in
low-income neighborhoods by offering generous tax breaks, during
Trump’s first administration. “Under Scott’s leadership,” the
announcement went on, “Opportunity Zones received over $50 Billion
Dollars in Private Investment!”

Turner is hardly the only Trump cabinet nominee to display skepticism
or outright hostility toward the work of agencies they may lead. But,
while other nominees have faced intense scrutiny in recent weeks,
Turner has attracted little public attention and said even less about
his intentions, beyond vowing to “bring much-needed change” to
HUD, as he wrote on Facebook last month. ProPublica pieced together
his views on housing through a review of legislative records and of
Turner’s public speeches, podcast appearances and sermons at the
Plano, Texas, megachurch where he is a pastor.

A possible HUD agenda for Turner can be found in Project 2025, the
Heritage Foundation’s recommendations for a conservative
presidential administration. The report calls for cutting funding for
affordable housing, repealing regulations that fight housing
discrimination, increasing work requirements and adding time limits
for rental assistance and eliminating anti-homelessness policies,
among other changes. The Project 2025 chapter on HUD lists Ben Carson,
the department secretary during the first Trump administration and a
mentor to Turner, as its author. Carson, as secretary, was involved in
efforts to end an anti-segregation rule
[[link removed]], add work
requirements
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housing assistance and make it harder to prove housing discrimination
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Turner’s views appear to be deeply rooted in his upbringing outside
Dallas, where he was, as he later put it
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“a young kid from a broken home, from a poor family.” His
parents’ relationship was “filled with violence, domestic
violence, abuse, a lot of anger [and] alcohol.” Years later, as a
legislator, Turner said that his sister
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been “on state assistance and wasn’t feeding [Turner’s] nephew
while she was on drugs.” (ProPublica was unable to locate Turner’s
sister for comment.)

Football proved an escape. Turner received a scholarship to play for
the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and then he went on to a
nearly decadelong career in the National Football League. He began
transitioning into politics while still in the league, interning for
California Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who years later would be
convicted of stealing from his campaign account. After an unsuccessful
run for a California congressional seat in 2006, Turner moved back to
Texas and was elected in 2012 to the state House of Representatives,
where he served for four years.

There, Turner solidified his position as a deeply conservative member
opposed to many government interventions into the housing market,
legislative records show. He voted against
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foreclosure prevention programs. He opposed legislation
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help public housing authorities replace or rehabilitate their property
(although he voted for a minor expansion of that bill
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years later). He also sought to require drug testing for poor families
applying for government assistance, the Houston Chronicle reported
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the time. Turner did support some modest housing assistance measures,
such as bills helping housing developments for seniors
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rural areas
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low-income housing tax credits.

During his time in office, Turner was the lead author of 17
substantive bills. None were related to housing, and none of them
became law.

“He’s a very nice guy,” but “he didn’t really make much of a
legislative impression,” said a former high-ranking Republican Texas
lawmaker, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about a former
colleague. “He didn’t leave a deep footprint.”

That did not stop Turner, however, from mounting an audacious bid for
the House speakership, a move reportedly
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Dunn, a West Texas pastor and oil billionaire who has used his fortune
to push the state Legislature far to the right
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Turner’s speaker campaign failed, but it helped solidify his
position within Texas’ deep-red Christian political milieu, where he
has remained ever since.

Turner is an associate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church, a
political force in Texas that has counted numerous statewide elected
officials as congregants. Jack Graham, the church’s senior
pastor, prayed over Trump
[[link removed]] at
an event in October and praised his electoral victory
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in November. Turner’s skepticism about government assistance has
found its way into his sermons there, where he has derided
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incentives created by the government and the welfare system, which in
turn creates an epidemic of fatherlessness in our country.”

Turner or his political staffers also used campaign money to attend
three conferences held by WallBuilders, an organization that seeks
“to reveal the historical truths” about the “Christian
foundation of our nation,” campaign finance records show. In 2016,
Turner gave a $10,000 gift to WallBuilders from his campaign account.

Turner’s allies on the Christian far right also include Ziklag, a
secretive network of ultrawealthy Christian families and religious
influencers that support Trump. As ProPublica reported
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Ziklag has raised millions of dollars as part of a larger mission to
help Christian leaders “take dominion” over key areas of American
society, from education and business to media and government. This
year, Ziklag spent millions of dollars to mobilize Republican-leaning
voters in swing states despite being a tax-exempt charity that isn’t
allowed to intervene in politics. (A lawyer for Ziklag previously told
ProPublica that the organization does not endorse candidates for
political office.)

In June 2019, Turner and his wife, Robin, attended a private Ziklag
conference at the Broadmoor luxury resort in Colorado Springs,
Colorado, according to photos of the event posted by an attendee. At
the time, Turner was working in the first Trump administration as
executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization
Council, where he served as a public salesman for the opportunity
zones initiative. Turner has praised the program
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improve neighborhoods with high poverty and unemployment
rates. Previous reporting
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ProPublica found that the program was exploited by wealthy,
politically connected investors, which drew scrutiny from members of
Congress.

Internal documents obtained by ProPublica and Documented show that
Ziklag members sought to take advantage of the program; in May 2019,
Ziklag said in one of its newsletters that members of the group had
met with three administration officials about opportunity zones.
“The administration informed the group they are in a state of
listening and learning about the program,” the document reads.
“Ziklaggers are exploring additional avenues to make an impact on
the program moving forward.”

After leaving the Trump administration, Turner started a nonprofit
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promotes “Christ-centered reading enhancement programs” for
children and helps people get driver’s licenses. He also became
“chief visionary officer” at the multifamily housing developer
JPI.

Now, if confirmed, Turner will be in charge of an agency with some
10,000 employees at a critical time. “We’re dealing with a pretty
terrible housing crisis all across the country,” said Roller, of the
National Housing Law Project. HUD will be “essential to any
effort” to solve it.

_Jesse Coburn covers cities, housing and transportation for
ProPublica. He’s interested in how the second Trump administration
will reshape federal policy in those areas, particularly at the
Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of
Transportation. If you work for one of those agencies or are affected
by their work, he’d like to hear from you. You can email him
at [email protected], or reach him via phone, Signal or
WhatsApp at 917-239-6642. _

* Housing Crisis
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* Housing and Urban Development Department
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* poverty
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* Trump nominees
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