Wednesday, January 21, 2026Statement of the Honorable E. Scott Turner Secretary of Department of Housing and Urban Development Before The House Financial Services Committee[...]

Chairman Hill, Ranking Member Waters, and distinguished Members of the Committee.

Thank you for this chance to testify today about what HUD has been doing the past year to spur prosperity in our communities, safety in our streets, and homeownership across America.

Under President Trump's leadership, we are fulfilling our mission of fostering strong communities by supporting access to quality, affordable housing, expanding the housing supply, and unlocking homeownership opportunities for the American people.

And we're doing that by empowering Americans and cutting red tape instead of intruding government power into every corner of Americans' lives.

As part of our campaign against overregulation, we eliminated the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which turned HUD into a national zoning board and robbed local communities of their zoning powers. The result was rising home prices and saddling communities with more red tape. (And AFFH did not build one home.)

HUD doesn't just promote housing affordability, we also help Americans recover after natural disasters. We have given disaster survivors more flexibility in how they use recovery funds, and we have also allocated more than $12 billion to assist American people. This aid provides survivors with a crucial helping hand to rise from the ruins of storms and floods.

Disaster relief is just one part of our mission. HUD defended women in shelters by ending the enforcement of a Biden-era policy that forced them to share spaces with men who claimed to "identify" as women. Women in these shelters oftentimes have suffered from severe trauma like sexual assault, or domestic violence, or both. It is outrageous, committee, that such women were put in danger in the name of far-left gender ideology, and restoring safety to these shelters marked a return to sanity.

Caring for the vulnerable also means helping the homeless. We are restoring balance to the Continuum of Care program and prioritizing treatment and recovery, as well as other supportive services, to address the root problems of homelessness and keep our streets safe. This is a marked difference from the Biden-era policy of throwing taxpayer dollars at the issue and calling it a day without any real results.

My uncle is a good example of how we have other options besides forcing homeless Americans into permanent dependence on government. He was a homeless, broken veteran with a debilitating disease. But my family and I took care of him, and made sure he got the wraparound services he needed. He would not have been better helped by being thrown into permanent public housing with no long-term treatment. He was able to live the rest of his life and die with dignity.

Vulnerable Americans benefit when we get them real treatment, and we're making sure our efforts are helping American citizens. We are reducing barriers facing homeless Americans that keep them from accessing evidence-based treatment and achieving successful, long-term recovery from drug addiction, to ultimately become productive citizens. We eliminated non-permanent resident eligibility for FHA-insured mortgages, and we are auditing public housing authorities to ensure taxpayer dollars don't support illegal aliens. American dollars should benefit American citizens. (And American citizens only.)

By focusing on our core mission, HUD provided a pathway for homeownership and supported housing affordability for more than one million Americans through FHA and Ginnie Mae.

We also take stewardship very seriously, so we're cracking down on waste, fraud, and abuse. Our Office of the Chief Financial Officer uncovered more than $5 billion in potential payment errors, over $50 billion in total rental assistance for Fiscal Year 2024-and that includes money that went to nearly 30,000 dead people. That is ludicrous, it's ridiculous to think or talk in such a way, it's a violation of our sacred trust to American taxpayers, and it's going to end. To help prevent fraud, waste, and abuse, we are taking steps to improve recipient and subrecipient reporting, enhance HUD monitoring capabilities, and streamline grants management. And we are rooting out corruption at public housing authorities and private multifamily owners, as seen by our action to address fraud in the Atlantic City Housing Authority and New York City Housing Authority.

Finally, committee, as part of making HUD run more efficiently, we have established a new HUD Efficiency Task Force to promote efficiency gains, benefiting the American people.

We've made tremendous strides over the past year, and under President Trump's leadership, we'll continue promoting housing affordability and cultivating the independence, freedom, and enterprise that pave the way to the American Dream of homeownership.

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, thank you so much, thank you committee members, I look forward to engage with you.