[Editor’s note: Trump announced just after publication that he will nominate Scott Turner, a former NFL player and House representative for Texas from 2013 to 2017, to lead HUD. Turner currently serves as the chair of the Center for Education Opportunity at America First Policy Institute, and was the executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council during Trump’s first term.]
So far, President-elect Donald J. Trump has named a TV doctor, a vaccine denier, and a former pro-wrestling bigwig to serve in his second-term cabinet. But he’s been fairly quiet about who he wants to helm the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
As the affordable housing world steels itself for the reality of the next four years, Trump’s campaign promise to fire thousands of career civil servants and slash billions in federal spending are top of mind for many. That list includes Sarah Saadian, senior vice president of public policy and field organizing at the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), a nonprofit that works to end the affordable housing crisis. Saadian is very worried.
“These public servants help ensure housing programs are administered. By eliminating many of those positions, there won’t necessarily be people within those agencies who have the expertise that’s needed to shape meaningful, impactful policy,” she says. “The people who will be left within that agency are going to be more ideologically driven than policy driven.”
Saadian has a lot of other worries about Trump’s plans, including the high probability he’ll try to slash HUD’s budget. He tried several times during his first term—one year by 18 percent, which NLIHC predicted would have eliminated rental assistance access for 250,000 households. She also worries about impending attacks on civil rights.
“The place where the Trump administration was most successful in harming housing policy was through undermining fair housing [policies],” she says. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s on the top of their target list this time around, too.”
While we don’t know what policies Trump will zero in on, one thing we can assume is that HUD’s leader will be a Trump loyalist. David Dworkin, who is CEO of the National Housing Conference and has served in several administration positions under presidents Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and George H.W. Bush, says that’s exactly how it should be.
“I think that President-elect Trump has made very clear that he takes his own counsel on these decisions,” Dworkin says. “The number one choice is the one who has the full confidence of the president, and it doesn’t matter who the president is. You need a cabinet that can work with the White House, or the cabinet is not going to be successful.”
While Trump hasn’t identified a HUD secretary nominee, several names are floating around:
- Former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, trained as a medical doctor.
- Brian Montgomery, who served as HUD’s deputy secretary under Trump.
- Bill Pulte, a philanthropist and home construction industry professional with no government experience.
- Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), incoming chair of the Senate Banking Committee.
- Dana Wade, former Federal Housing Administration commissioner under Trump.
With strangely few internet celebrities compared to those named to other agencies so far, and several candidates who actually have deep housing knowledge, the list nonetheless doesn’t give Saadian a clear affordable housing- or tenant-friendly option. But NLIHC and other housing advocacy organizations aren’t expecting an easy four years.
“We’re expecting to see the Trump administration push for a lot of the same harmful provisions that they did last time,” Saadian says. “I expect we’ll see an attempt to undermine evidence-based solutions to homelessness.” She even worries Trump could follow through on his campaign promise to create sanctioned encampments—which he called “tent cities” and Saadian likened to internment camps—for unhoused people. “With the increase of unsheltered homelessness, I worry that that they might want to pick up on that idea and run with it again,” she says.
Other first-term policies Saadian is particularly worried about seeing return—and potentially intensify—include his abrupt repeal of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, failure to enforce HUD fair housing standards, threat to increase rents on HUD housing residents, and attacks on Housing First policies.
“I think what makes 2024 different than 2016 is that this time around, whoever is secretary is going to have fewer checks and balances on their power,” she says. “There’s going to be fewer establishment Republicans in either Congress or in the administration who would push back on harmful policies.”
So, who are each of those potential leaders of the nation’s largest affordable housing provider? What are their housing policies and what is each likely to prioritize if nominated and confirmed?
Does It Take a Brain Surgeon?
Among the Trump loyalists jockeying for a spot in his next cabinet is Ben Carson. Rumored to have had his eye on the highest position at the Department of Health and Human Services, he was passed over in favor of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a man with no health care background who believes and pushes several debunked untruths about vaccines. Carson has said he doesn’t want to return to HUD, nor be surgeon general, but that he is in talks with Trump, according to news reports.
Carson has already laid out his plans for HUD in a second Trump administration. As the named author of the chapter dedicated to housing in Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,” his blueprint for gutting, partially privatizing, and eventually dismantling HUD is explicit. You can read or listen to Shelterforce’s take on it here.
Saadian says Carson’s chapter echoed his proposed policies and the actions he took last time he was HUD secretary. His office “put forth a number of proposals that would have made the housing crisis worse,” she says, like trying to slash HUD’s budget by billions several years in a row. (They were unsuccessful.)
“I think that record speaks for itself and shows that he’s unacceptable as a candidate to be HUD secretary,” Saadian says. “Voters are concerned about housing costs, and we need somebody in that position who’s going to advance real, meaningful solutions and not cruel, harmful, and divisive policies.”
Dworkin is far more bullish on Carson, saying he’s “very thoughtful and passionate about housing” and complimenting his support for the LIHTC program. Dworkin is also less concerned about Carson’s involvement in Project 2025, diminishing the book’s importance and likening it to a menu.
“You order off the menu the things you can digest,” he says. “So there are a lot of things in Project 2025 that are part of a traditional conservative agenda that are highly unlikely to be done.”
Secretary Been-There-Done-That
While threatening to fire thousands of dedicated career federal workers doesn’t scream appreciation for job experience, if experience is what Trump is looking for in a HUD secretary, Brian Montgomery is, according to Dworkin, “his guy.” Not only is Montgomery the only person to lead the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) twice, he’s already well-versed in HUD’s problems, policies, and potential because he was Carson’s deputy secretary. He left government work in 2021 and founded Gate House Strategies, an affordable housing advisory firm that also offers compliance management services.
Asked for a quick one-sentence description when read each candidate’s name, Dworkin immediately called Montgomery “the secretary of been there, done that.” His overall review was equally glowing: “He is by far the most highly qualified, experienced, and creative of all the potential candidates,” and is “capable of making the biggest difference” of any of them. “If President Trump decides that in economic policy, if he’s less interested in a disruptor than in somebody who will reorient the direction of housing policy, then [Montgomery] is going to be his guy.”
But could that experience and levelheadedness be drawbacks in an administration looking like it’ll be staffed by disruptors? Not necessarily. Dworkin says Montgomery’s “not unwilling to rock the boat. . . . I think that he’ll rock the boat in service of making the boat be safer and faster and more productive.”
Saadian says that although NLIHC (which focuses on renters) doesn’t work much with FHA (which is mostly concerned with homeownership), “from what I hear, [Montgomery] is a very responsible policymaker.” She also wonders, though, if Montgomery’s inclusion on this list is more wishful thinking for D.C. insiders than it is an appointment with real potential.
“He seems like the sort of old-school policymaker who’s focused on the policy and not the rhetoric,” she says. “This is not based on any insider knowledge, but I would guess that he might not be so high up on the list of possible HUD secretaries, because it seems like President Trump is really looking for somebody who’s going to go full force with his policy agenda, and I’m not sure if Montgomery would do that.”
Give It Away, Now
Philanthropist Bill Pulte, who was first identified by New York Post reporting as a serious contender for the top HUD spot, has long been known in Republican politics for giving away his money—which he says he mostly made in the heating and cooling industry, despite being the namesake grandson of the founder of one of the nation’s largest home construction companies.
As the internet celebrity of the group, he’s only been famous outside the super-PAC world since he started giving away his money via “Twitter philanthropy.” In 2019, Pulte started #BailOutHumans and began giving money directly to random people who tweeted their needs using the hashtag. It started with grocery bill-sized amounts, and things like gas money for a stranger who needed to get to her dad’s funeral. Today, by Pulte’s accounting, he’s given away millions.
He’s also acquired millions of social media followers and fans, including a retweet by then-first term (and not yet banned from Twitter, now X) President Trump. He was a vocal Trump supporter who went on FOX Business to skewer Vice President Kamala Harris’ housing reform plan, saying her campaign idea to offer $25,000 downpayment assistance would be “like putting rocket fuel on home prices,” and predicting that “it would make COVID stimulus look like nothing in terms of housing prices.”
Dworkin worked with Pulte in 2013 as part of Obama’s Detroit Recovery Team, and “found him to be really interested in community development and wanting to make a difference in what I would consider the hardest place in the country to do housing development,” he says.
When told about Pulte’s online giveaways, Saadian—who wasn’t familiar with him until his name began cropping up for the HUD job—said she’d rather hear about what housing policies he’s planning to introduce.
ROAD to Home or Road to HUD?
South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott has big ideas about how to address the housing shortage. Earlier this year, he introduced the ROAD to Home bill. One thing the bill does is eliminate the federal requirement that manufactured homes remain permanently attached to their chassis after delivery. While seemingly a tiny detail, removing the requirement could reduce per-unit cost by as much as $10,000, increase access to areas with zoning that excludes homes on chassis, and allow for more flexible floor plans and uses of manufactured homes—which provide the U.S. with its largest supply of unsubsidized affordable housing and are cheaper to build than most other forms of housing. Affordable housing advocates call this change a key factor to expanding the manufactured housing industry.
The bill also proposes eliminating the cap on the number of public housing units that can be converted to project-based Section 8 rentals, which are more consistently funded than public housing. This is part of the federal government’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, which Shelterforce has written about extensively:
- The Promise and Peril of HUD’s RAD Program
- New Public Housing? HUD Has Found a Way
- Does RAD Privatize Public Housing?
RAD advocates say removing the limit on the number of units that can be converted to voucher-funded housing could help pay for much-needed maintenance and capital improvements, stabilize financial performance, and protect tenants from displacement.
While Scott’s clear interest in housing reform does make him a logical choice for a Republican administration, as the incoming chair of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (often called the Banking Committee for short), Dworkin says Scott will wield just as much, if not more, influence on the housing world if he stays put in the Senate.
“It’s very hard to be asked by the president to serve in his cabinet and say no, and if he wants it, that’s great,” he says. “But the best housing job in town right now is chairing the Senate Banking Committee. So if he wants to do housing, I think he’s in the sweet spot.”
Saadian agrees it’s unlikely Scott would give up such a powerful Senate committee seat to become Trump’s HUD secretary.
“A lot of times, members of Congress wait years to go up the ranks and get their turn to be the committee chair,” she says. “He will have a lot of power and authority to craft legislation according to his priorities. So, that’s a hard seat to give up.”
Not Dana White
Only in 2024 would it be necessary to clarify when naming potential HUD secretary candidates that we mean Dana Wade and not Dana White—the CEO and president of Ultimate Fighting Championship, a global mixed martial arts franchise. But here we are.
Wade, on the other hand, took over as FHA commissioner in 2020 after Montgomery accepted an appointment as Carson’s number two at HUD. Dworkin calls her a “huge fan of Carson” and says that her previous experience at HUD and her relationships on the Hill “are going to be a major factor” if she’s nominated. In 2023, she was hired as a senior adviser to the Republican party for the House Financial Services Committee.
“I would say that if they’re looking at her, they’re looking in the right direction,” Dworkin says. “Because she would bring a lot of energy to a cabinet agency that could, you know, use some.”
Many Unknowns, Some Knowns
But is Trump looking at Wade? Is he truly looking at anyone on this list, or are POLITICO, Washington Post and the NY Post just taking shots in the dark? That’s one of the questions Saadian has, given Trump’s unexpected nominees for several of his other cabinet positions. Whoever ends up with the nomination, she expects it will be someone “in line with his vision, which is one that relies on cruel and harmful policy proposals. So my expectation is that advocates are going to have to mobilize and be active, regardless of who the HUD candidate is.”
Dworkin’s take is that while housing groups are “understandably nervous” about the anticipated “dramatic changes” coming to many government agencies, he believes it’s important to look for ways to cooperate with whoever Trump nominates and Congress confirms.
“Some housing groups are going to be committed to the resistance and others are going to try to find ways to work with the administration,” he says. “We’re in the latter group—with the distinct exception of fair housing. We are going to be vocal advocates for fair housing because there is no reason for housing not to be fair. Period. End of story.”
Saadian has broader goals. “Despite how scary the picture is, advocates were successful in defeating nearly all of the Trump administration proposals last time around, and we did that collectively because advocates mobilized and we worked with our congressional champions to take action and to push back,” she says. “And I think if we do that again, we will also be successful.”
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6 thoughts on “Who Could Lead HUD Under a Second Trump Administration?”
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Great writing even though the reality of the content is pretty frightening. Affordable housing already in a crisis, there is the possibillty that a Trump Administration will exacerbate this. Hang on for four years, if we can.
So Democrats changed policy in HUD housing whereby they can’t discriminate against criminals, any criminals for any reason. Murder it’s all cool. They can reject them but they have to prove that they’re not doing it in a discriminatory way. Ha. Same thing with credit checks but people really can’t be turned down unless the manager that it is non-discriminatory again. I live in HUD housing and I can’t be sure of who’s around me anymore. It kind of discriminates against people who pay their bills and who don’t commit felons.
I completely agree with P. Cushing. It’s like I wrote it myself!!!
Apparently I can’t just agree with what was said before me. They kick it back.
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
It doesn’t really matter they’re coming in and out of here anyway.