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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed former Texas state Rep. Scott Turner as President Donald Trump’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
HUD is charged with executing housing laws, including helping low-income people find homes and combating housing discrimination. The department was established under President Lyndon B. Johnson.
All voting Republicans, including both of Texas’ senators, supported Turner’s nomination. Two Democrats — Peter Welch of Vermont and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania — also supported him in the 55-44 confirmation vote.
“Scott Turner is an accomplished leader, dedicated public servant, and fourth-generation Texan who has consistently demonstrated a strong ability to harness housing and development to create more opportunities and brighter futures,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas said in a statement. “I’m honored to support Scott to lead HUD, and look forward to working with him in this new capacity.”
Turner served in the Texas House from 2013 to 2017. He ran for the speakership but lost to then-Speaker Joe Straus. He declined to run for reelection after challenging Straus.
Turner has described the HUD as an agency failing to meet a dire housing market. During a nomination hearing before the Senate Banking Committee, Turner said the agency’s mission “is to create strong and sustainable communities and support quality affordable housing serving the most vulnerable of our nation. Yet, as we sit here, we have a housing crisis in our country.”
But he demurred on greater federal investment to lower affordable housing construction costs, saying HUD should be “maximizing the budget,” which is roughly $72 billion for the 9,000-person department. Trump has said that cutting federal spending is a top priority and tapped the billionaire donor Elon Musk to run a highly unconventional operation to slash spending.
As a member of the Texas House, Turner was a skeptic for government assistance to alleviate poverty. He called welfare “one of the most destructive things for the family.” He refused to support legislation to help tenants on housing assistance find apartments and to study homelessness.
After serving in the Texas House, Turner served in the first Trump administration as director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council. The council was created in 2018 to “encourage public and private investment in urban and economically distressed areas, including qualified opportunity zones,” according to the executive order creating the council.
In the role, Turner worked on Opportunity Zones, which were low-income areas with investment potential encouraged by tax cuts. The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act included the creation of Opportunity Zones and is up for renewal this year.
During his nomination hearing, Turner said a member of his family was impacted by homelessness, asserting that “these aren’t just things that I’ve heard about. These are things that my family and I have experienced through the years.”
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