As Donald Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner could soon oversee the nation’s efforts to build affordable housing, protect poor renters and help the homeless. As a lawmaker in the Texas House of Representatives, Turner voted against these very initiatives.
Lathe supported the bill ensuring that landlords could refuse apartments to applicants because they received federal housing assistance. He opposed the bill expand affordable rental housing. He voted against funding a public-private partnership to support the homeless and against two bills that challenge simply study homelessness among youth and veterans.
Behind those voices lay a deep-seated skepticism about the value of the government’s anti-poverty efforts, a skepticism that Turner voiced again and again. He caused prosperity “dangerous, harmful” and “one of the most destructive things for a family.” When one interviewer said that receiving public assistance keeps recipients “captive” “in the worst shape”. find themselves in what slaveryTurner agreed.
Such views would seem to put Turner at odds with the core work of HUD, the sprawling federal agency that serves as a defense against homelessness for millions of the nation’s poor, elderly and disabled. With an annual discretionary budget of $72 billion, the department provides rental assistance to 2 million families, oversees the nation’s 800,000 public housing units, combats housing discrimination and segregation, and provides support to the nation’s 650,000 homeless. If Turner’s track record is any indication of how he will steer the agency’s agenda, the biggest losers will be those clinging to the bottom of the housing market, researchers and advocates say.
“I just don’t think he’s a person who fits the values of this agency at all,” said Sy Weaver, director of the advocacy group Housing Fairness for All. “It’s a deregulation agenda, and it’s an anti-poor agenda.”
Shamus Roller, executive director of the National Housing Law Project, said Turner’s views, if translated into policy, could increase homelessness. “If at a fundamental level you believe that people are on rent assistance if they’re very poor and struggling, if you believe that it’s actually an addiction and a bad thing, you’re going to try to undermine those programs,” he said. said.
One former colleague offered a more optimistic view of Turner’s stewardship of HUD. “I feel like he’s going to try to help people,” said Richard Peña Raymond, a Democratic member of the Texas House who served on the committee with Turner. “I think he’ll do a good job.”
Turner did not respond to detailed questions. A spokesman for the nominee said: “Of course, ProPublica will try to paint a negative picture of Mr. Turner before he’s even given a chance to testify. We expect nothing less from a publication that serves exclusively as a liberal mouthpiece.”
Trump’s transition team and HUD did not respond to requests for comment. Trump announcement of Turner’s nomination praised him for “helping lead an unprecedented effort to transform our nation’s most troubled communities” as head of the White House council that promoted Opportunity Zones, a plan to spur investment in low-income neighborhoods by offering generous tax breaks during the first administration Trump. “Under Scott’s leadership,” the report said, “Opportunity Zones has raised more than $50 billion in private equity!”
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Turner is hardly the only Trump cabinet nominee to show skepticism or outright hostility toward the work of the agencies they may lead. But while other nominees have faced scrutiny in recent weeks, Turner has attracted little public attention and said even less about his intentions beyond promising to “make much-needed changes” to HUD, he wrote on Facebook last month. ProPublica compiled his views on housing through a review of Turner’s legislative and public speaking engagements, podcast appearances and sermons at the Plano, Texas, megachurch where he pastors.
HUD’s possible agenda for Turner can be found in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s recommendations for a conservative presidential administration. The report, among other changes, calls for cuts to affordable housing funding, repealing anti-discrimination rules in housing, increasing work requirements and adding time limits to rental housing, and repealing anti-homelessness policies. The Project 2025 chapter on HUD credits Ben Carson, the department’s secretary during the first Trump administration and Turner’s mentor, as the author. Carson, as secretary, took part in the effort to repeal the anti-segregation rule, add job requirements on housing benefit and make it harder prove housing discrimination.
Turner’s views seem deeply rooted in his upbringing outside of Dallas, where he was as he later put it“a young child from a broken home, from a poor family.” His parents’ relationship was “filled with violence, domestic abuse, abuse, lots of anger (and) alcohol.” Years later, as a legislator, Turner said his sister “received public assistance and did not feed her nephew (Turner) while she was on drugs.” (ProPublica could not reach Turner’s sister for comment.)
Football turned out to be an escape. Turner earned a scholarship to play for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and he went on to a nearly decade-long career in the National Football League. He started moving into politics while still in the league, interning for California Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican who years later would be convicted of stealing from his account. After an unsuccessful run for a California congressional seat in 2006, Turner returned to Texas and was elected to the state House of Representatives in 2012, where he served for four years.
There, Turner cemented his position as a deeply conservative member who opposes much government intervention in the housing market, legislative records show. He voted against support for foreclosure prevention programs. He opposed the legislation to help public housing authorities replace or restore their properties (although he voted for a a minor extension of this bill two years later). He also sought to require drug testing for poor families applying for public assistance This is reported by the Houston Chronicle at that time. Turner supported some modest housing relief measures, such as housing assistance bills development for seniors and in rural areas seek tax credits for low-income housing.
During his tenure, Turner was the lead author of 17 major bills. None were related to housing, and none became law.
“He’s a very nice guy,” but “he didn’t make a big impression on the Legislature,” said a former top Republican lawmaker from Texas, who spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly about his former colleague. “He didn’t leave a deep mark.”
However, this did not prevent Turner from making a bold bid for the position of speaker of the House of Representatives. according to reports is supported by Tim Dunn, a West Texas pastor and oil billionaire who used his fortune to push the state legislature far to the right. Turner’s campaign failed, but it helped solidify his position in the red Christian political environment of Texas, where he remains to this day.
Turner is an associate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church, a political powerhouse in Texas that counts many elected state officials among its members. Jack Graham, senior pastor of the church, prayed over Trump at an event in October and appreciated his victory in the elections from the pulpit in November. Turner’s skepticism about public assistance found its place in his sermons where he scoffed “the perverse incentives created by government and the welfare system, which in turn creates an epidemic of fatherlessness in our country.”
Turner or his political associates also used campaign money to attend three conferences held by WallBuilders, an organization that seeks to “uncover the historical truth” about “our nation’s Christian foundation,” campaign finance records show. In 2016, Turner made a $10,000 gift to WallBuilders from his account.
Turner’s allies on the Christian far right also include Ziklag, a secretive network of ultra-wealthy Christian families and religious influencers who support Trump. As reported by ProPublicaZiklag has raised millions of dollars as part of a broader mission to help Christian leaders “take control” of key areas of American society, from education and business to media and government. Ziklag has spent millions of dollars this year mobilizing GOP supporters in swing states despite being a tax-exempt charity prohibited from interfering in politics. (Ziklag’s attorney previously told ProPublica that the organization does not endorse candidates for political office.)
In June 2019, Turner and his wife Robyn attended a private Ziklag conference at the luxury Broadmoor Resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado, according to photos of the event posted by an attendee. At the time, Turner served in the first Trump administration as executive director of the White House Council on Opportunity and Revitalization, where he served as the public marketer for the Opportunity Zones Initiative. Lathe highly appreciated the program as a way to improve areas with high levels of poverty and unemployment. Preliminary reporting ProPublica found that the program was used by wealthy investors with political connections, drawing scrutiny from members of Congress.
Internal documents obtained by ProPublica and Documented show that Ziklag members sought to take advantage of the program; in May 2019, Ziklag reported in one of its newsletters that members of the group met with three administration officials about opportunity zones. “The administration informed the group that they were in a state of listening and studying the program,” the document said. “Ziklaggers explore additional avenues to influence program promotion.”
After leaving the Trump administration, Turner founded a non-profit organization which promotes “Christ-centered reading improvement programs” for children and helps people get their driver’s licenses. He also became “Chief Visionary Officer” at multifamily housing developer JPI.
Now, if confirmed, Turner will lead an agency of about 10,000 employees at a critical time. “We’re dealing with a pretty dire housing crisis across the country,” said Roller of the National Housing Law Project. HUD will be “essential to any effort” to address it.
Jesse Coburn covers cities, housing and transportation for ProPublica. He is interested in how a second Trump administration will reshape federal policy in these areas, particularly at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation. If you work for one of these agencies or are affected by their work, he would like to hear from you. You can email him (email protected)or reach him by phone, Signal or WhatsApp at 917-239-6642. His mailing address is: Jesse Coburn, ProPublica, 155 6th Avenue, 13th Floor, New York, NY 10013.
