HUD secretary open to withholding federal funding from cities over homelessness

The Secretary of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is open to withholding federal funding from major American cities that fail to show progress in dealing with homelessness issues.

“That may be a good idea,” Turner told conservative radio show host Ari Hoffman in an interview Wednesday. “We have to take inventory of that and study and research what’s going on and what’s not being done. One thing about this is [that it’s] taxpayer money. The government doesn’t have money, this is hard working Americans’ money, and so my job and my team’s job is to be a good steward over that money and to make sure that it’s actually accomplishing the goal and the mission that it’s been called to accomplish. And we’re very serious and deliberate about that.”

Turner was also asked about what he sees as the biggest accomplishments at the department over the course of his early leadership there, and he pointed to the elimination of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule which he called “a zoning tax on American communities from the Biden-Obama area” that made it harder to develop land for more housing.

On homelessness, Turner said that the formation of more public-private partnerships with faith-based and nonprofit organizations is a step forward for dealing with such issues, and also cited work of the U.S. DOGE Service’s dedicated HUD task force.

Turner also credited the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) contracts as a cost savings for taxpayers, as well as the priority to root out undocumented immigrants from HUD-supported public housing and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage programs.

“No longer can illegal aliens get FHA-backed mortgages,” Turner said. “The Biden administration was turning a blind eye and allowing this to happen where illegal aliens were able to get these FHA mortgages. So no longer will that be the case.”