HUD Secretary Scott Turner couldn’t provide a single example of what he has done in the year-plus since he took office.
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner crashed and burned Thursday when trying to defend the Trump’s administration’s massive budget cuts to his department.
Appearing before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Turner repeatedly rehashed his issues with former President Joe Biden’s administration, which he claimed accomplished less with a larger budget—rather than provide any evidence of his own work. Lawmakers were fed up.
Pamela Herd and Don Moynihan at Can We Still Govern?:
Using administrative burdens to make the safety net less accessible has been a Trump goal since his first administration. In 2018, he signed an executive order tying work requirements to safety net benefits. It had little effect. In his second term, he’s had more success, expanding work requirements in SNAP and adding them to Medicaid — and now he’s targeting public housing.
Work requirements – or more accurately, paperwork requirements – are simply an alternative way for Trump to achieve his real goal: dismantle housing assistance, without receiving Congressional permission to do so. This includes the Housing Choice Voucher program and Project-Based Rental Assistance.
A few months ago HUD unveiled a plan to impose time limits and add work requirements on rental assistance. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that 3.7 million people, including almost two million kids, could lose this support as a result, in a program that only helps about 10 million people. That seems like a pretty effective way to tip vulnerable families into homelessness.
OMB Director Russell Vought has argued that housing support is simply “subsidized irresponsibility.” But as you consider Vought’s judgment, bear in mind he has taken $15 million in development aid from the poorest people in the world, and another $5 million from funding to protect American consumers…to pay for his personal security detail.
If anything, we don’t do nearly enough to ensure children have a roof over their heads. Current estimates are that over 4 million children experience homelessness each year. Only 1 in 4 of those eligible for housing assistance actually receive support.
One can’t overstate the importance of these benefits. They reduce poverty, substantially reduce the risk of homelessness, and have downstream positive effects on people’s health and well-being. Overall, 70 percent of housing assistance recipients are children, the disabled, or older adults.
And the proposed changes come at a time when housing needs have skyrocketed, with ‘worst case’ housing needs (such as low-income families spending more than 50 percent of income on housing) rising by over 30 percent in the last 20 years. But rather than expand housing opportunity, the Trump administration is simply going to cut access to the program.
Housing assistance is already notoriously difficult to obtain. Because there isn’t enough funding to meet needs, most people who ultimately receive these benefits wait years before they get help. Wait times vary across places, but in Alabama the average wait time is 5 years, compared to 2 years in Arizona, 4 years in the District of Columbia, and 3 years in Georgia. Those receiving housing assistance are also tightly monitored, and face bias from landlords.
Work requirements don’t work
Scott Turner, the head of HUD, has justified the proposed rule as enabling self-sufficiency. But that's not what the research says. The main takeaways of this research (described in more detail below) are:
Work requirements do not increase labor force participation, because people who can work are already working.
Work requirements cause eligible individuals lose access to public services even if they are working because lots of people struggle with the paperwork.
While work requirements might exempt some groups (this plan excludes people with a disability or with very young children for example), if these groups also have to demonstrate their exemption status via onerous paperwork, they are still at risk of losing support.
The housing authorities that administer these programs are already understaffed and overwhelmed with managing existing onerous requirements.
The rule is structured as a waiver, meaning that it allows but does not force owners and housing agencies to adopt work requirements. But as CBPP points out HUD “could pressure housing agencies and private owners to adopt them, including through illegal tactics like those the Trump Administration has used to impose its policy priorities and preferences in other areas.”
The Trump Regime seeks to expand the disastrous work requirements policy to public housing as part of its attacks on housing assistance.
Which department head do You, Personally, hate the most? (part 2)
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Secretary of Health and Human Services)
Scott Turner (Secretary of Housing and Urban Development)
Sean Duffy (Secretary of Transportation)
Chris Wright (Secretary of Energy)
Linda McMahon (Secretary of Education)
Doug Collins (Secretary of Veterans Affairs)
Kristi Noem (Secretary of Homeland Security)
Voting ended onSep 7, 2025
I'm going to pit the winners of this poll and the part 1 poll against each other after they're over. Again, reblog with arguments, I want to see everyone's reasoning.
