Senate confirms former NFL player Scott Turner as HUD secretary
The Senate voted 55-44 Wednesday to confirm the nomination of Scott Turner, a former professional football player, as the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Turner takes over a roughly $68 billion agency that provides rental assistance, builds and preserves affordable housing, addresses homelessness and enforces the Fair Housing Act that prohibits discrimination in housing. The department aids 4.3 million low-income families through public housing, rental subsidy and voucher programs.
In Turner's hearing before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee last month, he said he wants to fix broken policy areas, ween Americans off of government assistance and prioritize building more homes.
“As a country, we’re not building enough housing,” Turner said in his opening statement. “We need millions more homes of all kinds, single family, apartments, condos, duplexes, manufactured housing, you name it, so individuals and families can have a roof over their heads and a place to call home.”
He said it is his goal "to help people get off government assistance, become self-sustainable and achieve the American dream."
The committee voted along party lines Jan. 23 to advance his nomination, with some Democrats saying they only opposed his nomination because they had not yet received the results of his background check.
Dr. Ben Carson, a former GOP presidential candidate, led HUD in Trump's first term.
Who is Scott Turner?
After graduating from University of Illinois, Turner was drafted by the Washington Redskins in 1995 and spent nine years in the NFL playing for the Denver Broncos and San Diego Chargers. After an unsuccessful bid for a California congressional seat before he went on to win a a 2013 state house race in Texas, where he was born and raised.
Turner also served during the first Trump administration as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council from 2019 to 2021.
The council was tasked with coordinating with federal agencies to attract investment to so-called “Opportunity Zones,” which were economically depressed areas eligible to be used for the federal tax incentives. Under Turner’s leadership Opportunity Zones received over $50 billion in private investment, according to Trump.