As HUD secretary, Scott Turner would oversee billions in housing support, however as a Texas state legislator he voted in opposition to protections for poor tenants and has referred to as authorities help “one of the most destructive things for the family.”
By Jesse Coburn and Andy Kroll for ProPublica
As Donald Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. Division of Housing and City Growth, Scott Turner could quickly oversee the nation’s efforts to construct reasonably priced flats, shield poor tenants and support the homeless. As a lawmaker within the Texas Home of Representatives, Turner voted in opposition to these very initiatives.
Turner supported a invoice making certain landlords may refuse flats to candidates as a result of they acquired federal housing help. He opposed a invoice to increase reasonably priced rental housing. He voted in opposition to funding public-private partnerships to help the homeless and in opposition to two payments that referred to as merely to review homelessness amongst younger folks and veterans.
Behind these votes lay a deep-seated skepticism in regards to the worth of presidency efforts to alleviate poverty, a skepticism that Turner has voiced time and again. He has referred to as welfare “dangerous, harmful” and “one of the most destructive things for the family.” When one interviewer stated receiving authorities help was retaining recipients in “bondage” of “a worse form to find oneself in than slavery,” Turner agreed.
Such views would seemingly place Turner at odds with the core work of HUD, a sprawling federal company that serves as a backstop in opposition to homelessness for tens of millions of the nation’s poor, aged and disabled. With an annual discretionary finances of $72 billion, the division gives rental help to 2 million households, oversees the nation’s 800,000 public housing items, fights housing discrimination and segregation and gives help to the nation’s 650,000 homeless. If Turner’s document signifies how he’ll direct the company’s agenda, it’s these clinging to the underside of the housing market who’ve probably the most to lose, researchers and advocates stated.
“It just doesn’t seem to me like this is someone who is at all aligned with what the values of that agency should be,” stated Cea Weaver, director of the advocacy group Housing Justice for All. “It’s a deregulatory agenda, and it’s an anti-poor people agenda.”
Shamus Curler, government director of the Nationwide Housing Legislation Undertaking, stated Turner’s views, if translated into coverage, may improve homelessness. “If, at a fundamental level, you believe that people getting assistance with their rent when they’re very poor and struggling, if you think that’s actually dependence and a bad thing, you’re going to try to undermine those programs,” he stated.
One former colleague provided a extra optimistic view of Turner’s stewardship of HUD. “My sense of him is he will try to help people,” stated Richard Peña Raymond, a Democratic Texas Home member who served on a committee with Turner. “I do think he’ll do a good job.”
Turner didn’t reply to detailed questions. A spokesperson for the nominee stated: “Of course ProPublica would try and paint a negative picture of Mr. Turner before he is even given the opportunity to testify. We would expect nothing less from a publication that solely serves as a liberal mouthpiece.”
The Trump transition group and HUD didn’t reply to requests for remark. Trump’s announcement of Turner’s nomination praised him for “helping lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our Country’s most distressed communities” as head of a White Home council that promoted alternative zones, a plan to spur funding in low-income neighborhoods by providing beneficiant tax breaks, throughout Trump’s first administration. “Under Scott’s leadership,” the announcement went on, “Opportunity Zones received over $50 Billion Dollars in Private Investment!”
Turner is hardly the one Trump cupboard nominee to show skepticism or outright hostility towards the work of businesses they might lead. However, whereas different nominees have confronted intense scrutiny in latest weeks, Turner has attracted little public consideration and stated even much less about his intentions, past vowing to “bring much-needed change” to HUD, as he wrote on Fb final month. ProPublica pieced collectively his views on housing by a assessment of legislative data and of Turner’s public speeches, podcast appearances and sermons on the Plano, Texas, megachurch the place he’s a pastor.
A attainable HUD agenda for Turner will be present in Undertaking 2025, the Heritage Basis’s suggestions for a conservative presidential administration. The report requires chopping funding for reasonably priced housing, repealing rules that struggle housing discrimination, rising work necessities and including deadlines for rental help and eliminating anti-homelessness insurance policies, amongst different modifications. The Undertaking 2025 chapter on HUD lists Ben Carson, the division secretary throughout the first Trump administration and a mentor to Turner, as its creator. Carson, as secretary, was concerned in efforts to finish an anti-segregation rule, add work necessities for housing help and make it tougher to show housing discrimination.
Turner’s views look like deeply rooted in his upbringing outdoors Dallas, the place he was, as he later put it, “a young kid from a broken home, from a poor family.” His mother and father’ relationship was “filled with violence, domestic violence, abuse, a lot of anger [and] alcohol.” Years later, as a legislator, Turner stated that his sister had been “on state assistance and wasn’t feeding [Turner’s] nephew while she was on drugs.” (ProPublica was unable to find Turner’s sister for remark.)
Soccer proved an escape. Turner acquired a scholarship to play for the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, after which he went on to a virtually decadelong profession within the Nationwide Soccer League. He started transitioning into politics whereas nonetheless within the league, interning for California Rep. Duncan L. Hunter. After an unsuccessful run for a California congressional seat in 2006, Turner moved again to Texas and was elected in 2012 to the state Home of Representatives, the place he served for 4 years.
There, Turner solidified his place as a deeply conservative member against many authorities interventions into the housing market, legislative data present. He voted in opposition to supporting foreclosures prevention packages. He opposed laws to assist public housing authorities exchange or rehabilitate their property (though he voted for a minor enlargement of that invoice two years later). He additionally sought to require drug testing for poor households making use of for presidency help, the Houston Chronicle reported on the time. Turner did help some modest housing help measures, comparable to payments serving to housing developments for seniors and in rural areas search low-income housing tax credit.
Throughout his time in workplace, Turner was the lead creator of 17 substantive payments. None had been associated to housing, and none of them turned legislation.
“He’s a very nice guy,” however “he didn’t really make much of a legislative impression,” stated a former high-ranking Republican Texas lawmaker, who requested anonymity to talk candidly a couple of former colleague. “He didn’t leave a deep footprint.”
That didn’t cease Turner, nonetheless, from mounting an audacious bid for the Home speakership, a transfer reportedly backed by Tim Dunn, a West Texas pastor and oil billionaire who has used his fortune to push the state Legislature far to the proper. Turner’s speaker marketing campaign failed, nevertheless it helped solidify his place inside Texas’ deep-red Christian political milieu, the place he has remained ever since.
Turner is an affiliate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church, a political drive in Texas that has counted quite a few statewide elected officers as congregants. Jack Graham, the church’s senior pastor, prayed over Trump at an occasion in October and praised his electoral victory from the pulpit in November. Turner’s skepticism about authorities help has discovered its approach into his sermons there, the place he has derided the “perverse incentives created by the government and the welfare system, which in turn creates an epidemic of fatherlessness in our country.”
Turner or his political staffers additionally used marketing campaign cash to attend three conferences held by WallBuilders, a company that seeks “to reveal the historical truths” in regards to the “Christian foundation of our nation,” marketing campaign finance data present. In 2016, Turner gave a $10,000 reward to WallBuilders from his marketing campaign account.
Turner’s allies on the Christian far proper additionally embody Ziklag, a secretive community of ultrawealthy Christian households and spiritual influencers that help Trump. As ProPublica reported, Ziklag has raised tens of millions of {dollars} as half of a bigger mission to assist Christian leaders “take dominion” over key areas of American society, from training and enterprise to media and authorities. This yr, Ziklag spent tens of millions of {dollars} to mobilize Republican-leaning voters in swing states regardless of being a tax-exempt charity that isn’t allowed to intervene in politics. (A lawyer for Ziklag beforehand instructed ProPublica that the group doesn’t endorse candidates for political workplace.)
In June 2019, Turner and his spouse, Robin, attended a personal Ziklag convention on the Broadmoor luxurious resort in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in response to pictures of the occasion posted by an attendee. On the time, Turner was working within the first Trump administration as government director of the White Home Alternative and Revitalization Council, the place he served as a public salesman for the chance zones initiative. Turner has praised this system as a approach to enhance neighborhoods with excessive poverty and unemployment charges. Earlier reporting by ProPublica discovered that this system was exploited by rich, politically linked traders, which drew scrutiny from members of Congress.
Inner paperwork obtained by ProPublica and Documented present that Ziklag members sought to benefit from this system; in Could 2019, Ziklag stated in one in every of its newsletters that members of the group had met with three administration officers about alternative zones. “The administration informed the group they are in a state of listening and learning about the program,” the doc reads. “Ziklaggers are exploring additional avenues to make an impact on the program moving forward.”
After leaving the Trump administration, Turner began a nonprofit that promotes “Christ-centered reading enhancement programs” for kids and helps folks get driver’s licenses. He additionally turned “chief visionary officer” on the multifamily housing developer JPI.
Now, if confirmed, Turner can be accountable for an company with some 10,000 workers at a crucial time. “We’re dealing with a pretty terrible housing crisis all across the country,” stated Curler, of the Nationwide Housing Legislation Undertaking. HUD can be “essential to any effort” to resolve it.
