Recent History @ HUD
This page is offered in an effort to preserve a record of the historic shift in government operations.
For context and alternative views, please visit Facts & Fiction
January 16, 2025
Nomination Hearing
Eric Scott Turner testified before Congress on January 16, 2025. While advocates were skeptical of his qualifications to lead HUD as former NFL player with an undergraduate in speech communications, Turner was enthusiastic to echo language of project2025 and the Trump agenda while offering no specifics information to demonstrate any individual contribution, instead citing issues like homelessness and housing supply as failures of the agency. Turner would later cite DEI as “dead at HUD,” the irony of which was lost upon no one, cut homelessness programs and funding, and withhold disaster relief over issues such as providing funding preferences to minority or women-owned businesses.
January 31, 2025
DEI Purge
In accord with the DOGE plan to burn and rebuild, immediate stop work orders were issued throughout the agency on contracts related to diversity, equity, inclusion, or any tangentially related service or matter remotely affiliated with disproportionately helping those most vulnerable among us. As organizations and efforts around the country were impacted, causing ripples across universities, research organizations, and non-profits alike, DOGE quickly proclaimed its successes, with Turner boasting of saving $260M, $4M of which were DEI-related contracts.
February 7, 2025
Turner ends 2016 Equal Access Rule
Continuing the focus on issues related Christianity instead of those related to HUD’s mission, or affordable housing, or providing homes to ALL citizens, Turner states, “there are only two sexes: male and female. [repealing the rule].. means getting government out of the way of what the Lord established from the beginning when he created man in His own image.”
February 10, 24, 2025
Return to Work
HUD employees were ordered to return to work the week of February 10th, and 24th, for non-bargaining and bargaining employees, respectfully. This was in line with the President’s executive order which offered reasoning such as, “because virtually unrestricted telework has led to poorer government services and made it more difficult to supervise and train government workers, as stated in the Government-wide guidance issued by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.”
February 17, 2025
Reduction in Force
Around the week of February 17th, HUD employees were given evidence of the proposed cuts presented to HUD from DOGE-OPM, and were presented with information on criteria to be used when determining the remaining workforce. While various justifications were given to the public, the targets given were final numbers of employees by Office, eliminating any potential arguments of keeping top performers or losing only poor ones. Instead the end results were given for results at the 120-day mark, leaving justifications to be developed afterwards. As public backlash mounted against similar efforts at USAID, DHHS, and other agencies mounted, RIFs were paused to offer Fork in the Road offers to employees to incentivize reductions.
~February 20, 2025
DOGE Gets Access
HUD Enforcement Management System, or HEMS, contains medical information and other personal information about hundreds of thousands of alleged victims of housing discrimination, including victims of domestic violence. New DOGE employees at HUD Michael Mirski and Scott Langmack gain access to multiple systems providing insight into the housing market. WIred reports this includes, “the identities of every single federal public housing voucher holder in the US, along with their financial information, to information on the hospitals, nursing homes, multifamily housing, and senior living facilities that HUD helps finance, as well as data on everything from homelessness rates to environmental and health hazards to federally insured mortgages.”
March 3, 2025
Cancellation of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH)
Current Washington bureaucrat Secretary Turner states, ““Local and state governments understand the needs of their communities much better than bureaucrats in Washington D.C. Terminating this rule restores trust in local communities and property owners, while protecting America’s suburbs and neighborhood integrity.” The rule had previously granted more authority to the federal government to ensure fair and equal access to affordable housing, particularly in light of local regulations and zoning reflecting NIMBYism towards multi-family housing. In contradiction of this, Turner stated that by eliminating the rule, “we can better serve rural, urban and tribal communities that need access to fair and affordable housing.”
March 7, 2025
HUD Crypto Experiment
As industry undertakes new positions at HUD, bizarre meetings occur to discussion HUD utilizing a blockchain to track CPD spending to a grantee as a proof of concept. The matter is so alarming internal memos are circulated with stated, “Without exaggeration, every imaginable implementation of this at HUD appears dangerous and inefficient.” HUD denies these meetings occurred, but staff forwards meeting invites, notes, and attendee lists to Propublica.
March 12, 2025
Green and Resilient Retrofit Program Cancelled
AP reports HUD will cancel the $1 billion Green and Resilient Retrofit Program, passed by Congress in 2022, which is intended for energy-efficiency improvements. It is distributed in grants and loans to owners of affordable housing in need of updating. While the funding would provide updates to over 25,000 homes, buildings receiving funding would offer affordable housing options for up to 25 years. One building administrator, Michelle Arevalos, stated, “In all honesty, if this building were not here, a lot of our folks actually probably would be homeless.”
March 15, 2025
“Ugliest Building in DC“
In another bout of irony, Turner begins targeting the current HUD HQ, named after the first African-American secretary, Robert Weaver. While the Washington Post found HUD to be #2 on the list of ugly DC locations, Turner states, “You know, HUD is known as the ugliest building in D.C., which is not a mantra I like….. We want to create an environment here — including our building — where people want to be proud of where they come to work and carry out the mission and the assignment that we have.” Turner has since removed water filtering and refrigeration at HUD, where half the elevators work, and has looped a Trump inauguration EO signing video non-stop since employees returned to work to replace previous communications of schedules, weather, and local transit conditions.
March 17, 2025
DOI Federal Land Joint Initiative
A press release states, “HUD will pinpoint where housing needs are most pressing and guide the process by working with state and local leaders who know their communities best. Interior will identify locations that can support homes while carefully considering environmental impact and land-use restrictions. Working together, our agencies can take inventory of underused federal properties, transfer or lease them to states or localities to address housing needs, and support the infrastructure required to make development viable—all while ensuring affordability remains at the core of the mission.“
March 24, 2025
“Crackdown” on Mortgages for Illegal Immigrants
While no aid is ever provided to illegal immigrants, similar to TANF or SNAP, benefits may be provided to an individual who has a noncitizen in the house. Of all those provided assistance, these “mixed” households constitute 0.5%. Nonetheless, Turner dedicates on FTE to the initiative and produces an MOU lacked detail, just over one page in length. The MOU “describes the approach that the agencies will take to adjust HUD’s immigration-related eligibility requirements, including to establish a point of contact between the agencies. “Representatives of the parties will establish lines of communication and begin developing joint measures…HUD will provide a full-time staff member to assist in operations.”
April 16, 2025
Easter Sermon Email
In a blatant disregard for concepts such as the separation of church and state, Turner grants 4 hours of excused leave for Good Friday, or the Friday preceding the holiday of Easter. In the email Turner reminds employees soon to be terminated to be thankful, the irony of which is not lost on the Huffington Post, which writes, “call on staff to reflect on how lucky they are to live in a country that “puts her citizens first” is wildly disconnected from the reality that President Donald Trump is actively looking for ways to deport U.S. citizens, arresting and detaining U.S. citizens, deporting U.S. citizen children with parents who are undocumented and, most alarmingly, defying a Supreme Court order to bring back a Maryland man who was in the country legally but deported to El Salvador due to an “administrative error.”