September 4, 2025 • 18 mins
America is in the midst of a historic housing crisis, with record homelessness levels and a nationwide shortage of affordable housing. Addressing this crisis is the purview of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the federal agency tasked with making sure Americans have a safe, affordable place to live.
Today on the show, The Big Take’s Sarah Holder on her recent trip to meet with HUD Secretary Scott Turner, a former NFL cornerback and Texas state representative. Turner came into office pledging to help America build millions of new homes. But he's also supported other changes at HUD that critics say threaten that mission, like unprecedented staffing reductions and proposed cuts to rental aid. What will this new age for HUD mean for America's housing goals?
Read more: Trump’s Housing Chief Wants to Build, But With What?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
So we're gonna do something a little different today. I'm
here with my co host Sarah Holder. Hey, Sarah, Hi, David.
Sarah doesn't just host the Big Take, She's also someone
who covers housing for Bloomberg and Sarah, you have written
a new story for Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Yes. Back in July, I took a trip down to Washington,
d C. To meet Scott Turner, who's the new Secretary
of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I met
him in the agency's nearly sixty year old headquarters, and
one of the first things he showed me was this
big white cinder block that was on his office floor.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
That brick right there, y'all see that break That break
fail right here where my closet is, and hit two
feet above.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
My head while you were in the office.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Literally when I was walking out of my office to
brick fail.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
This is one of the hazards I guess of working
for HUD.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah, Turner has a lot of problems with this building.
It's got dim lighting, elevators that are often out of service,
bad air quality. Hudstaffers too have complained about this building
for years. When I visited a sign over one of
the entrances said welcome to HUD, and it was missing
the M.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, that is not a good look for the agency
that's responsible for enforcing housing standards in the US, is it.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Well, that's what Turner has been arguing. But rather than
try to fix HUD's existing building, Turner has announced plans
to move out of the city entirely and into a
fancier office building in the suburbs of Alexandria, Virginia. It's
one that's currently occupied by the National Science Foundation, which
is facing drastic cuts from the Trump administration, and the
(01:38):
move is still a little bit in flux, but Turner
sees it as a symbolic win. He wants the new
building to help usher in a new golden age. As
he puts it, for the agency.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
It's a culture shift, it's a paradigm shift. And so
that's what we mean, going from the old to the new,
gone from mediocre to excellence.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
And David now would be a great time for HUD
to be excellent because the country is in the midst
of a historic housing crisis. The US has sky high
housing costs, record homelessness levels, and a nationwide shortage of
affordable housing, and HUD has an important role to play
in solving all that.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
It's most pronounced program is housing Vouchers, which is the
direct support that HUD pays on behalf of tenants to
landlords for low income people for millions of households across
the country.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
This is Bloomberg City Lab reporter Kristen Kapps, who wrote
and reported the story with me and who's an expert
on all things HUD.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
It provides the support the financing for the many affordable
housing developers and the many nonprofits that build affordable housing
that provide services for homeless people across America. HUT does
a lot more things than that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
HUDD also enforces anti discrimination laws and provides mortgage insurance
for first time home buyers.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Bly HUT is in charge of making sure Americans have
a safe, affordable place to live.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Right but Turner is facing down this housing crisis with
a HUD that's nearly thirty percent smaller than it was
before Donald Trump took office, and with a budget that
the President had proposed cutting by more than forty percent.
Turner had supported those proposed budget HUTS, and he's also
pushing other policies that could shrink HUD's programs.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
The budget doesn't have anything to do with the mission.
The mission remains the same.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I'm David Gera and I'm Sarah Holder. This is the
big take from Bloomberg News Today.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
On the show, HUD's Secretary Scott Turner's mission to kick
off an affordable housing building spree, while he supports policies
that could kick millions of renters off of government housing aid.
What Turner's plan could mean for the US housing crisis.
Like many HUD secretaries before him, Scott Turner didn't come
(03:58):
into the role with much experience in housing policy, but
he told my co host Sarah Holder that hutt's mission
of serving low income communities is personal to him.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I've always had a heart for the hurting and a
heart for those who were downtrodden.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Secretary Turner grew up in the suburbs of Dallas in
a family that didn't have much money.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I understand struggle all too well.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
His parents divorced when he was ten years old. He
talks about this a lot as sort of a pivotal
moment in his childhood.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Growing up in the home where your parents are not
always at peace. When there's confusion and chaos and arguments
and at times violence, it makes it very hard for
(04:47):
a child. And so the early years of my life,
that was what my home was like.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
His parents weren't on any federal housing assistance, but other
members of his family were. His wife, Robin, was on
Section eight growing up.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Turner ended up getting a full ride to play football
in college and played nine seasons as a cornerback in
the National Football League. After he retired from the NFL,
he dabbled in politics, starting in twenty twelve. He served
two terms in the Texas House of Representatives, and Bloomberg's
Kristen Capps, who worked on this story with Sarah says
housing didn't appear to be high on the list of
(05:22):
Turner's political priorities back then.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
He doesn't have a strong record of passing any kind
of housing bills.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
But in twenty eighteen, Turner landed a job in the
first Trump administration.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
He becomes the head of the White House's Council on
Opportunity Zones under the first Trump administration, and so the
Opportunity Zone program was basically a tax break for developers
to develop in distressed neighborhoods in the country, and so
Scott Turner used his experience in politics as experience in
public speaking to kind of helm that council, where he
(05:54):
traveled around the country basically preaching the gospel of opportunity zones,
talking to low income communities across the country about what
this sort of tax break for developers program could do
for them. So that's kind of the first time that
we see him intersect with the Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
The Opportunity Zone program ended up being a controversial one.
It attracted more than one hundred billion dollars in investment,
far more than anticipated, but research suggests the program poured
money into areas already primed for development, and jobs mostly
went to outside workers. Under President Biden, opportunity zones went
on the back burner and Turner went back to Texas.
(06:34):
He became an associate pastor for a Dallas area Baptist
megachurch and chief visionary officer for a multi family real
estate developer. Then, when Trump was reelected, he tapped Turner
to run HUD.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
It's a pleasure to be here today to introduce my
friend and fellow Texan Scott Turner to be the next
Secretary of the US Housing Department of Housing and Urban Development,
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
What are his ideas and vision for HUD, What does
he want to see it turn into under his leadership.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
So one of the big things that housing advocates sort
of noticed about Scott Turner in his confirmation hearing was
he really emphasizes the importance of building affordable housing.
Speaker 6 (07:15):
We have a housing crisis in our country. We have
the American people and families that are struggling every day.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Which is something a lot of people across the space
agree on as one of the ways to get America
out of this housing crisis. We have a housing shortage
of four point seven million homes, as much as seven
million affordable ones.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
We need millions of homes, all kinds of home, multifamily,
single family, duplex, condo, manufacturing, housing, you name it.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
But he's also someone who really distrusts the social safety net,
And as we mentioned earlier, part of Hudd's main role
in this country is propping up the social safety net
with vouchers that they disperse to nine million tenants across
the country and their landlord. So he's really focused on
supply and he's really really distrustful of the voucher program.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
In his confirmation hearing, Turner talked about slashing red tape
and said it's time for the federal government and for
the Housing Agency to do more with less. Here's a
telling exchange between Turner and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 7 (08:21):
Do you support additional federal investment in programs so that
we can lower the cost of building affordable housing?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Thank you, Sanda Wall. What I do support is maximize
in the budget that we do have and making sure
that the money.
Speaker 7 (08:38):
So he said, a no to additional investments.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Is a yes to maximize in the investment that we have.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
After the break, how the Trump administration is shrinking HUD
and what it means for affordable housing, fair housing protections,
and homelessness in the US, HUDD started the year with
over eight thousand staffers, but after a few rounds of
(09:10):
buyouts led by the Department of Government Efficiency, Bloomberg's Kristen
Kapp says around twenty three hundred of those staffers left,
and HUD is now thirty percent smaller.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
There was already within the administration during the election conversations
about cutting back programs. That's certainly been a talking point
for Republican administrations before Donald Trump in his first term.
So I think that HUD expected to see things like
(09:40):
cuts to voucher programs.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
But Kristin says what they didn't expect was to lose
so many staff. Turner made it clear to Sarah in
their interview that he didn't fire all these people.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
When I asked Turner about those numbers, he was very
very clear that these were people who wanted to leave voluntarily.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
I'll know you all, Bloomberg, You and other media outlets
have reported about these dark, deep cuts going on at HUT.
None of that is true. Tell me, we had twenty
three hundred people who opted to take a different path,
but we haven't had deep cuts.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
However you describe these departures, Kristen says, they're already taking
their toll on several of HUD's key offices.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
The office that distributes billions of dollars in community level
block grants has shed forty percent of its staff. The
office that oversees the housing vouchers have shed something like
thirty percent of staff. The Federal Housing Administration, which is
this agency that backs mortgage insurance for you know, many
(10:44):
first time home buyers across the country, and this is
a program that generates billions of dollars for the Treasury,
and that office has lost something like twenty five percent
of its staff.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Turner has said that HUD has enough staff to fulfill
its mission critical functions, and in a statement, HUD declined
to comment on specific staffing changes, but current and former staffers,
along with affordable housing advocates, told Sarah and Kristen that
the changes at HUD have hurt its ability to carry
out one of its most important mandates, preventing housing discrimination.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
One of the duties for HUD from when it was
very first established was to enforce fair housing. To enforce
the provisions of the Fair Housing Act of nineteen sixty eight.
You know that meant that a person you know could
not be refused a home, could not be refused to rent,
could not be refused the opportunity to buy based on
(11:41):
their race, based on their religion. HUD has always been
on the forefront of enforcing these laws.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
According to a HUDD union leader, the number of attorneys
who now work on fair housing cases at the agency
is down from around twenty to single digits.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
When I asked Gott Turner about the level of fair
housing enforcement that's going on country right now. He said
the law will be followed, discrimination will be rooted out.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
But HUT staffers say the agency is closing major discrimination
lawsuits and reopening cases where it already secured settlements. HUD
declined to comment on this. One advocate told Sarah that
HUDD has stopped pursuing cases involving allegations of discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. A HUD
spokesperson said the agency can't comment on the status of
(12:28):
specific cases that have not been made public, and said
that they were upholding the president's executive order. That order
recognizes only two sexes and refutes the existence of trans people.
Turner has cut some of the red tape he promised.
He's pushed lawmakers to remove a federal regulation on manufactured
housing that could help unlock more factory build homes, and
(12:49):
he's also pulled back a range of information gathering requirements
for mortgage lenders in an effort to cut housing costs.
But Turner has advocated for funding changes that critics say
threatened to undermine the agency's core mission.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Trump's proposed budget calls for cutting HUD's overall budget by
more than forty percent. It also calls for consolidating the
voucher program we've talked about and moving it to the
states and cutting its funding significantly as well. It also
proposed two year time limits on vouchers, which would mean
that folks who have maybe lived in public housing for
(13:25):
six years even while working and can't afford a market
rent would be picked out of the program.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
N YU researchers estimate that nearly one point four million
households could be impacted by such time limits. But Turner
has defended the cuts President Trump has proposed.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
He's really re emphasized the idea of being efficient and effective,
and he said that, you know, we have record numbers
of people experiencing homelessness, sleeping on the streets, and HUD's
budget is more than seventy billion dollars, and so his
logic is that we're spent so much money and not
seeing results, like we should stop spending money. And members
(14:05):
of Congress have said they don't understand that logic, that
if the problem is so grave and so deep, part
of the issue is that HUD has been underfunded for
decades and they want to see more targeted investments and
they don't want to see millions of tenants being evicted
overnight from their residences because they say that that is
(14:25):
really the thing that could increase homelessness in this country.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Lawmakers have since proposed their own more generous spending plans
for HUD.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
So the House and the Senate have submitted their own
budgets which restore a lot of that voucher funding, which
restore a lot of that affordable housing production funding.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Congress has until September thirtieth to pass a final budget,
a budget that housing advocates hope won't look much like
the one the President has proposed, but Sarah says that
doesn't mean the voucher program is safe. Putting time limits
on vouchers is still on Turner's priority list, and he's
also signaled he wants to add more work requirements to
rental aid.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Social safety and nets were never meant to be a hammock,
but instead they should be a trampoline. They were never
meant to be a resting place, but instead a place
to where you can get on your feet and then
to be projected out to live a life of self sustainability.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
And so the concern is even without cutting the budget
by forty percent, you could still sort of reduce the
size and the importance and the significance of the voucher
program through these other sort of legislative changes.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Instead, Turner wants HUD to focus on getting as many
new homes built as possible.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Do you have a number.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I don't have a number. The number that really sticks
out of my head every day is seven million, because
that's the need that we have. But I believe by
taking down these burdens and regulations, by building public private partnerships,
by being very active with our state and local partners,
that we can and the President obviously is very in
(15:56):
tune to this and has made it a priority that
we can build many housand units, neighborhoods and projects in
the years that we have here. But one day at
a time.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
The problem is building anywhere close to seven million homes
will take a while.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
There are millions of Americans who need help from HUD
to pay the rent today, thousands of landlords who rely
on rental aid to make their mortgages today, and a
whole network of affordable developers who use HUD money to
break ground on new projects today.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Sarah, I want to wrap up by returning to something
you said, which is Scott Turner, the secretary of HUD,
is somebody who acknowledges the housing crisis, believes fervently in
the need to build more housing, and at the same
time he's very skeptical of a lot of the social
safety net programs. How hard is it for him to
hold both of those things at once, hold both of
(16:51):
those beliefs at once.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
A lot of the people I've spoken to have told
me it's really hard to do both of those things
at once, because in its current at least, the affordable
housing ecosystem in the United States really depends on money
from HUT. It depends on the voucher program. It depends
on the work of people who are ensuring that folks
who can't afford to move when they're being discriminated against,
(17:13):
have protections. So if cuts to the voucher program go through,
even in the future, if HUD is no longer able
to defend tenants' rights in the same way, there could be,
sources say, even more homelessness, because what happens to folks
who are evicted from their public housing after two years
if time limits are to go into effect, what happens
to people who can't work who are caregivers for their family.
(17:36):
If work requirements were to go into effect, the market
rents right now are not affordable for broad swaths of
this country, and many affordable developers can't afford to build
affordable housing at a profit without those subsidies from HUT.
So if they cut these fundamental programs that HUD has
provided for decades, Turner could make it a lot harder
(17:59):
to address some of the underlying causes of the housing
crisis that he says he cares about so deeply.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. To get
more from The Big Take and unlimited access to all
of bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg dot com
slash podcast offer. If you like this episode, make sure
to follow and review The Big Take wherever you listen
to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening.
We'll be back tomorrow.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
So we're gonna do something a little different today. I'm
here with my co host Sarah Holder. Hey, Sarah, Hi, David.
Sarah doesn't just host the Big Take, She's also someone
who covers housing for Bloomberg and Sarah, you have written
a new story for Bloomberg Business Week.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
Yes. Back in July, I took a trip down to Washington,
d C. To meet Scott Turner, who's the new Secretary
of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. I met
him in the agency's nearly sixty year old headquarters, and
one of the first things he showed me was this
big white cinder block that was on his office floor.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
That brick right there, y'all see that break That break
fail right here where my closet is, and hit two
feet above.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
My head while you were in the office.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Literally when I was walking out of my office to
brick fail.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
This is one of the hazards I guess of working
for HUD.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
Yeah, Turner has a lot of problems with this building.
It's got dim lighting, elevators that are often out of service,
bad air quality. Hudstaffers too have complained about this building
for years. When I visited a sign over one of
the entrances said welcome to HUD, and it was missing
the M.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Well, that is not a good look for the agency
that's responsible for enforcing housing standards in the US, is it.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Well, that's what Turner has been arguing. But rather than
try to fix HUD's existing building, Turner has announced plans
to move out of the city entirely and into a
fancier office building in the suburbs of Alexandria, Virginia. It's
one that's currently occupied by the National Science Foundation, which
is facing drastic cuts from the Trump administration, and the
(01:38):
move is still a little bit in flux, but Turner
sees it as a symbolic win. He wants the new
building to help usher in a new golden age. As
he puts it, for the agency.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
It's a culture shift, it's a paradigm shift. And so
that's what we mean, going from the old to the new,
gone from mediocre to excellence.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
And David now would be a great time for HUD
to be excellent because the country is in the midst
of a historic housing crisis. The US has sky high
housing costs, record homelessness levels, and a nationwide shortage of
affordable housing, and HUD has an important role to play
in solving all that.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
It's most pronounced program is housing Vouchers, which is the
direct support that HUD pays on behalf of tenants to
landlords for low income people for millions of households across
the country.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
This is Bloomberg City Lab reporter Kristen Kapps, who wrote
and reported the story with me and who's an expert
on all things HUD.
Speaker 4 (02:37):
It provides the support the financing for the many affordable
housing developers and the many nonprofits that build affordable housing
that provide services for homeless people across America. HUT does
a lot more things than that.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
HUDD also enforces anti discrimination laws and provides mortgage insurance
for first time home buyers.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Bly HUT is in charge of making sure Americans have
a safe, affordable place to live.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Right but Turner is facing down this housing crisis with
a HUD that's nearly thirty percent smaller than it was
before Donald Trump took office, and with a budget that
the President had proposed cutting by more than forty percent.
Turner had supported those proposed budget HUTS, and he's also
pushing other policies that could shrink HUD's programs.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
The budget doesn't have anything to do with the mission.
The mission remains the same.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I'm David Gera and I'm Sarah Holder. This is the
big take from Bloomberg News Today.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
On the show, HUD's Secretary Scott Turner's mission to kick
off an affordable housing building spree, while he supports policies
that could kick millions of renters off of government housing aid.
What Turner's plan could mean for the US housing crisis.
Like many HUD secretaries before him, Scott Turner didn't come
(03:58):
into the role with much experience in housing policy, but
he told my co host Sarah Holder that hutt's mission
of serving low income communities is personal to him.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I've always had a heart for the hurting and a
heart for those who were downtrodden.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
Secretary Turner grew up in the suburbs of Dallas in
a family that didn't have much money.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
I understand struggle all too well.
Speaker 3 (04:21):
His parents divorced when he was ten years old. He
talks about this a lot as sort of a pivotal
moment in his childhood.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
Growing up in the home where your parents are not
always at peace. When there's confusion and chaos and arguments
and at times violence, it makes it very hard for
(04:47):
a child. And so the early years of my life,
that was what my home was like.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
His parents weren't on any federal housing assistance, but other
members of his family were. His wife, Robin, was on
Section eight growing up.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Turner ended up getting a full ride to play football
in college and played nine seasons as a cornerback in
the National Football League. After he retired from the NFL,
he dabbled in politics, starting in twenty twelve. He served
two terms in the Texas House of Representatives, and Bloomberg's
Kristen Capps, who worked on this story with Sarah says
housing didn't appear to be high on the list of
(05:22):
Turner's political priorities back then.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
He doesn't have a strong record of passing any kind
of housing bills.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
But in twenty eighteen, Turner landed a job in the
first Trump administration.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
He becomes the head of the White House's Council on
Opportunity Zones under the first Trump administration, and so the
Opportunity Zone program was basically a tax break for developers
to develop in distressed neighborhoods in the country, and so
Scott Turner used his experience in politics as experience in
public speaking to kind of helm that council, where he
(05:54):
traveled around the country basically preaching the gospel of opportunity zones,
talking to low income communities across the country about what
this sort of tax break for developers program could do
for them. So that's kind of the first time that
we see him intersect with the Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
The Opportunity Zone program ended up being a controversial one.
It attracted more than one hundred billion dollars in investment,
far more than anticipated, but research suggests the program poured
money into areas already primed for development, and jobs mostly
went to outside workers. Under President Biden, opportunity zones went
on the back burner and Turner went back to Texas.
(06:34):
He became an associate pastor for a Dallas area Baptist
megachurch and chief visionary officer for a multi family real
estate developer. Then, when Trump was reelected, he tapped Turner
to run HUD.
Speaker 5 (06:46):
It's a pleasure to be here today to introduce my
friend and fellow Texan Scott Turner to be the next
Secretary of the US Housing Department of Housing and Urban Development,
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
What are his ideas and vision for HUD, What does
he want to see it turn into under his leadership.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
So one of the big things that housing advocates sort
of noticed about Scott Turner in his confirmation hearing was
he really emphasizes the importance of building affordable housing.
Speaker 6 (07:15):
We have a housing crisis in our country. We have
the American people and families that are struggling every day.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Which is something a lot of people across the space
agree on as one of the ways to get America
out of this housing crisis. We have a housing shortage
of four point seven million homes, as much as seven
million affordable ones.
Speaker 6 (07:36):
We need millions of homes, all kinds of home, multifamily,
single family, duplex, condo, manufacturing, housing, you name it.
Speaker 3 (07:44):
But he's also someone who really distrusts the social safety net,
And as we mentioned earlier, part of Hudd's main role
in this country is propping up the social safety net
with vouchers that they disperse to nine million tenants across
the country and their landlord. So he's really focused on
supply and he's really really distrustful of the voucher program.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
In his confirmation hearing, Turner talked about slashing red tape
and said it's time for the federal government and for
the Housing Agency to do more with less. Here's a
telling exchange between Turner and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
Speaker 7 (08:21):
Do you support additional federal investment in programs so that
we can lower the cost of building affordable housing?
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Thank you, Sanda Wall. What I do support is maximize
in the budget that we do have and making sure
that the money.
Speaker 7 (08:38):
So he said, a no to additional investments.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Is a yes to maximize in the investment that we have.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
After the break, how the Trump administration is shrinking HUD
and what it means for affordable housing, fair housing protections,
and homelessness in the US, HUDD started the year with
over eight thousand staffers, but after a few rounds of
(09:10):
buyouts led by the Department of Government Efficiency, Bloomberg's Kristen
Kapp says around twenty three hundred of those staffers left,
and HUD is now thirty percent smaller.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
There was already within the administration during the election conversations
about cutting back programs. That's certainly been a talking point
for Republican administrations before Donald Trump in his first term.
So I think that HUD expected to see things like
(09:40):
cuts to voucher programs.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
But Kristin says what they didn't expect was to lose
so many staff. Turner made it clear to Sarah in
their interview that he didn't fire all these people.
Speaker 3 (09:51):
When I asked Turner about those numbers, he was very
very clear that these were people who wanted to leave voluntarily.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
I'll know you all, Bloomberg, You and other media outlets
have reported about these dark, deep cuts going on at HUT.
None of that is true. Tell me, we had twenty
three hundred people who opted to take a different path,
but we haven't had deep cuts.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
However you describe these departures, Kristen says, they're already taking
their toll on several of HUD's key offices.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
The office that distributes billions of dollars in community level
block grants has shed forty percent of its staff. The
office that oversees the housing vouchers have shed something like
thirty percent of staff. The Federal Housing Administration, which is
this agency that backs mortgage insurance for you know, many
(10:44):
first time home buyers across the country, and this is
a program that generates billions of dollars for the Treasury,
and that office has lost something like twenty five percent
of its staff.
Speaker 2 (10:56):
Turner has said that HUD has enough staff to fulfill
its mission critical functions, and in a statement, HUD declined
to comment on specific staffing changes, but current and former staffers,
along with affordable housing advocates, told Sarah and Kristen that
the changes at HUD have hurt its ability to carry
out one of its most important mandates, preventing housing discrimination.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
One of the duties for HUD from when it was
very first established was to enforce fair housing. To enforce
the provisions of the Fair Housing Act of nineteen sixty eight.
You know that meant that a person you know could
not be refused a home, could not be refused to rent,
could not be refused the opportunity to buy based on
(11:41):
their race, based on their religion. HUD has always been
on the forefront of enforcing these laws.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
According to a HUDD union leader, the number of attorneys
who now work on fair housing cases at the agency
is down from around twenty to single digits.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
When I asked Gott Turner about the level of fair
housing enforcement that's going on country right now. He said
the law will be followed, discrimination will be rooted out.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
But HUT staffers say the agency is closing major discrimination
lawsuits and reopening cases where it already secured settlements. HUD
declined to comment on this. One advocate told Sarah that
HUDD has stopped pursuing cases involving allegations of discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. A HUD
spokesperson said the agency can't comment on the status of
(12:28):
specific cases that have not been made public, and said
that they were upholding the president's executive order. That order
recognizes only two sexes and refutes the existence of trans people.
Turner has cut some of the red tape he promised.
He's pushed lawmakers to remove a federal regulation on manufactured
housing that could help unlock more factory build homes, and
(12:49):
he's also pulled back a range of information gathering requirements
for mortgage lenders in an effort to cut housing costs.
But Turner has advocated for funding changes that critics say
threatened to undermine the agency's core mission.
Speaker 3 (13:02):
Trump's proposed budget calls for cutting HUD's overall budget by
more than forty percent. It also calls for consolidating the
voucher program we've talked about and moving it to the
states and cutting its funding significantly as well. It also
proposed two year time limits on vouchers, which would mean
that folks who have maybe lived in public housing for
(13:25):
six years even while working and can't afford a market
rent would be picked out of the program.
Speaker 2 (13:32):
N YU researchers estimate that nearly one point four million
households could be impacted by such time limits. But Turner
has defended the cuts President Trump has proposed.
Speaker 3 (13:42):
He's really re emphasized the idea of being efficient and effective,
and he said that, you know, we have record numbers
of people experiencing homelessness, sleeping on the streets, and HUD's
budget is more than seventy billion dollars, and so his
logic is that we're spent so much money and not
seeing results, like we should stop spending money. And members
(14:05):
of Congress have said they don't understand that logic, that
if the problem is so grave and so deep, part
of the issue is that HUD has been underfunded for
decades and they want to see more targeted investments and
they don't want to see millions of tenants being evicted
overnight from their residences because they say that that is
(14:25):
really the thing that could increase homelessness in this country.
Speaker 2 (14:28):
Lawmakers have since proposed their own more generous spending plans
for HUD.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
So the House and the Senate have submitted their own
budgets which restore a lot of that voucher funding, which
restore a lot of that affordable housing production funding.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Congress has until September thirtieth to pass a final budget,
a budget that housing advocates hope won't look much like
the one the President has proposed, but Sarah says that
doesn't mean the voucher program is safe. Putting time limits
on vouchers is still on Turner's priority list, and he's
also signaled he wants to add more work requirements to
rental aid.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
Social safety and nets were never meant to be a hammock,
but instead they should be a trampoline. They were never
meant to be a resting place, but instead a place
to where you can get on your feet and then
to be projected out to live a life of self sustainability.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
And so the concern is even without cutting the budget
by forty percent, you could still sort of reduce the
size and the importance and the significance of the voucher
program through these other sort of legislative changes.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Instead, Turner wants HUD to focus on getting as many
new homes built as possible.
Speaker 3 (15:34):
Do you have a number.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
I don't have a number. The number that really sticks
out of my head every day is seven million, because
that's the need that we have. But I believe by
taking down these burdens and regulations, by building public private partnerships,
by being very active with our state and local partners,
that we can and the President obviously is very in
(15:56):
tune to this and has made it a priority that
we can build many housand units, neighborhoods and projects in
the years that we have here. But one day at
a time.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
The problem is building anywhere close to seven million homes
will take a while.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
There are millions of Americans who need help from HUD
to pay the rent today, thousands of landlords who rely
on rental aid to make their mortgages today, and a
whole network of affordable developers who use HUD money to
break ground on new projects today.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Sarah, I want to wrap up by returning to something
you said, which is Scott Turner, the secretary of HUD,
is somebody who acknowledges the housing crisis, believes fervently in
the need to build more housing, and at the same
time he's very skeptical of a lot of the social
safety net programs. How hard is it for him to
hold both of those things at once, hold both of
(16:51):
those beliefs at once.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
A lot of the people I've spoken to have told
me it's really hard to do both of those things
at once, because in its current at least, the affordable
housing ecosystem in the United States really depends on money
from HUT. It depends on the voucher program. It depends
on the work of people who are ensuring that folks
who can't afford to move when they're being discriminated against,
(17:13):
have protections. So if cuts to the voucher program go through,
even in the future, if HUD is no longer able
to defend tenants' rights in the same way, there could be,
sources say, even more homelessness, because what happens to folks
who are evicted from their public housing after two years
if time limits are to go into effect, what happens
to people who can't work who are caregivers for their family.
(17:36):
If work requirements were to go into effect, the market
rents right now are not affordable for broad swaths of
this country, and many affordable developers can't afford to build
affordable housing at a profit without those subsidies from HUT.
So if they cut these fundamental programs that HUD has
provided for decades, Turner could make it a lot harder
(17:59):
to address some of the underlying causes of the housing
crisis that he says he cares about so deeply.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
This is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. To get
more from The Big Take and unlimited access to all
of bloomberg dot com, subscribe today at Bloomberg dot com
slash podcast offer. If you like this episode, make sure
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We'll be back tomorrow.
Hosts And Creators
Sarah Holder
Saleha Mohsin
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