WASHINGTON — Senators pressed Division of Housing and City Growth nominee Eric Scott Turner on how he would sort out housing affordability and homelessness throughout a Thursday affirmation listening to.
“As a country, we’re not building enough housing,” Turner mentioned in his opening assertion. “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 company that gives rental help, builds and preserves inexpensive housing, addresses homelessness and enforces the Honest Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in housing.
Turner mentioned his most important aim as HUD secretary can be to sort out the housing scarcity and to extend the housing provide of inexpensive houses, in addition to finish distant work for HUD staff.
The U.S. Workplace of Authorities Ethics has not made his public monetary disclosure out there but.
Throughout the first Trump administration, Turner labored with then-HUD Secretary Ben Carson on so-called Alternative Zones, which have been a part of the 2017 regulation that supplied tax breaks for traders who put cash into designated low-income areas, although it was primarily for industrial actual property.
Turner is a former NFL participant and served two phrases within the Texas Legislature till 2017.
Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen mentioned he’s glad that constructing inexpensive housing will likely be a precedence for Turner, however raised considerations about Trump’s plans to boost tariffs.
Turner mentioned that he is aware of preserving the price of constructing supplies inexpensive is essential, however in the end tariffs are as much as 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 mentioned. “That’s what I’m focused on.”
Cutbacks in applications
Senate Democrats like Tina Smith of Minnesota, Jack Reed of Rhode Island and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada raised considerations about sure HUD applications that incoming President-elect Donald Trump focused throughout his first time period in workplace.
Cortez Masto mentioned Trump tried to restrict and lower applications that supported building of inexpensive housing.
Trump in a price range request to Congress referred to as for chopping housing applications such because the Neighborhood Growth Block Grant, which directs funding to native and state governments to rehabilitate and construct inexpensive housing.
She requested Turner if he would take the identical strategy.
“My goal… is to look at all of the programs within HUD and see what is successful, and what’s not successful,” he mentioned, including that he would advocate to the president which applications are working.
Cortez Masto requested if Turner had a place on housing vouchers. He mentioned he’s nonetheless studying about them, together with different applications 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 mentioned.
Freshman GOP. Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio blamed the scarcity of housing on immigrants who entered the nation with out correct authorization, and requested Turner how he thought they performed into homelessness.
Turner cited HUD’s annual homelessness report launched in December. In that report, the company discovered {that a} file variety of folks have been experiencing homelessness attributable to pure disasters, new immigrants arriving in the USA, the top of an eviction moratorium put in place as a result of coronavirus pandemic and the top of the expanded baby tax credit score.
“It noted that illegal migration, you know illegal immigration, has caused a lot of the homelessness in our country,” Turner mentioned. “It’s going to be a great burden on the economy, on housing, on homelessness, on health, in our country.”
Blended standing households
Freshman Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, mentioned in his state it’s quite common to have blended standing households, that means members of the family with totally different immigration and citizenship statuses.
Gallego mentioned in the course of the first Trump administration, HUD tried by way of a rulemaking course of to restrict housing help to blended standing households. He requested Turner if households with one member who’s an undocumented immigrant can 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 mentioned. “My job would be to uphold the laws on the books.”
Solely U.S. residents have entry to federal housing, and there’s no HUD regulation that bars blended standing households from receiving federal help. The Biden administration rescinded the rulemaking course of in 2021 began in the course of the first Trump administration that attempted to make blended standing households ineligible for federal housing help.
“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 mentioned.
Gallego mentioned in relation to blended standing households, “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 mentioned.