Scott Turner’s nomination by President Trump to lead the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has garnered less attention than some of his other cabinet picks. This is surprising given the power he wields over millions of people’s most immediate everyday need—having a place to live.
As the housing and climate crises continue to collide—destroying homes, displacing communities, and causing instability in the insurance industry—it’s important to understand the background of the person selected to lead the agency responsible for policy and programs to address America’s urgent housing needs.
Turner’s track record of advancing ultra-conservative agendas raises valid concern that he would prioritize developer interests while shifting climate risk onto local governments and individuals.
What does the HUD Secretary do?
As the head of HUD, Scott Turner would oversee a broad, important portfolio of programs that literally helps keep the roof over many people’s heads.
HUD serves a crucial role in providing access to affordable housing for millions of people, including through rental assistance programs, public housing, and pathways to homeownership. These programs are especially important for low-income households, people who live with disabilities, the elderly and families with young children.
HUD also provides financial support for community and economic development through its Community Development Block Grant Program. The Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) component of this program is increasingly important in an era of worsening climate-fueled disasters.
The question is: if Turner is confirmed as HUD secretary, will he keep the people’s interests as his top priority—or will he be more beholden to deep-pocketed real estate and developer interests?
Potential conflicts of interest
To get an idea of how he would lead HUD, it’s important to look at who Scott Turner is. He has had a varied career, including stints in the Texas legislature, the first Trump Administration, and the NFL. During his time in the Texas legislature, Turner stuck mostly to the fiscally and socially conservative Tea Party agenda and didn’t file any housing bills.
Most recently, Turner has served as a Chief Inspiration Officer for JPI—a development firm that specializes in building multi-family homes across the income spectrum. While it’s essential for the nation’s housing secretary to understand the development landscape, their actions must be rooted in the public interest, not real estate industry interests. The Project 2025 chapter on HUD, authored by former HUD Secretary Ben Carson who Turner considers a mentor, encourages the sale of existing public housing to private, profit-motivated developers.
Additionally, Turner’s former employer has a longstanding and well-publicized relationship with RealPage, a private equity-backed software firm that the US Justice Department claims enables price-fixing, artificially increasing the rents of hundreds of thousands of renters nationwide. As the average American pays more money than ever before to keep a roof over their head, this confluence of interests and influence should raise concerns during confirmation hearings.
Opportunity Zones
In his previous role as a senior official at HUD, Turner was celebrated by President Trump and others for his role in promoting Opportunity Zones. Opportunity Zones were a signature economic development effort of the first Trump administration codified in the 2017 tax bill that allowed investors to defer taxes on capital gains by siphoning those gains into a fund that invested in economically distressed areas.
The architects of Opportunity Zones claimed the program would spur desirable investment in communities and jumpstart economic revitalization, however, the program didn’t lay out tight regulatory guidelines, and the full impact of the policy isn’t yet obvious as investments can be made through 2026 and some forms of investment (like developing or rehabbing housing) can take years to realize.
What we do know is that real estate is the largest investment category among Opportunity Zone investors. It’s reported that thousands of affordable homes have been financed in hot housing markets like Charlotte and Austin, but how many of those homes are meaningfully affordable or only nominally affordable, stretching buyers and renters thin, is unclear.
The return of Opportunity Zones was a key component of the president-elect’s campaign platform, and they are poised for extension in the new administration and Republican-controlled Congress. If Turner’s job is to champion safe, healthy affordable housing, members of Congress should ask how he intends to strongly condition Opportunity Zones to help address the nation’s housing shortage and whether those benefits will flow to those with lower incomes.
Reversing climate progress at HUD
In addition to investing in public housing, rental support and providing pathways to homeownership for low-income families, HUD is also tasked with distributing funds for long-term recovery to cities and states after increasingly frequent and costly disasters. Cuts to disaster response programs in other federal agencies like FEMA proposed in Project 2025 will almost certainly reduce community resilience and may drive up the price tag of long-term recovery that Turner is tasked with administering.
In the last few years, HUD has adopted climate initiatives to make affiliated properties more energy efficient, weatherize buildings against extreme heat and reduce flood risk. Project 2025 recommends eliminating the agency’s climate programs. The climate denialism of these proposed repeals aside, the conservative playbook’s obsession with reducing government spending simply transfers risk to levels of government and communities less equipped than the federal government to pursue resilience.
HUD’s climate initiatives are intended to keep communities safer and tackle climate challenges that, if left unchecked, will have increasingly expensive impacts on its assets and risk the lives of people the agency has a responsibility to protect.
Members of Congress should probe Turner on the true, long-term cost of walking away from common sense climate efforts like weatherization and floodplain standards.
Project 2025 regurgitates rejected policies
It’s too soon to tell just how much of President Trump’s dangerous agenda Scott might be able to realize as HUD Secretary. Much of the Project 2025 plan for the agency are policies that were rejected or unfinished during the first Trump presidency, which like the coming administration also began with a Republican-controlled congress.
Other parts of President Trump’s agenda like his inhumane threats of mass deportation could make it harder to build affordable homes. With an electorate deeply concerned about making ends meet, it’s important that confirmation hearings reveal who Turner will center in his leadership—a nation struggling with housing costs and growing climate risk or his real estate industry colleagues.