Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner continued to decry housing-first policies and “wasteful spending” as he defended billions of dollars in cuts to the agency’s proposed budget for fiscal 2027.
Turner on Thursday testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee, fielding bipartisan scrutiny and at times heated exchanges from legislators as he sought to secure support for the budget proposal.
“Taxpayer dollars are finite. Our responsibility is not,” Turner said in a prepared statement before the committee. The agency’s budget proposal “reins in wasteful spending, stops the ballooning of federal welfare programs, and continues HUD’s focus on serving the American people,” he said.
HUD is seeking $73.5 billion in funding, down 13% from fiscal 2026, in a budget that eliminates some longstanding housing and homeless programs for local governments, such as the Community Development Block Grant and Continuum of Care programs. The agency is shifting away from housing-first policies and instead prioritizing supportive services and more “pathways to self-sufficiency,” Turner said.
The agency also said it is introducing 20-hour-a-week work requirements and five-year time limits for “able-bodied Americans” receiving federal rental assistance.
“Housing-first advocates fed a homeless industrial complex that simply warehoused the homeless and called it a day,” Turner said, arguing that increased funding from the prior administration coincided with higher rates of homelessness.
Sen. Kristen Gillibrand, D-N.Y., asked Turner for data such as updated national point-in-time homeless counts, a report that has been delayed since December.
“I get it to say, ‘We don’t want to fund programs if they’re not working well enough’ … but I’d like to see the results,” she said. “Where is the homelessness data report? … That would give us the data to see if your theory about how to address homelessness actually works.”
Turner blamed the prolonged government shutdown last year for the delay in the report as the two sparred over the role the Biden administration played in addressing the nation’s homelessness crisis.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., pushed back on the HUD chief’s characterization of the CDBG program, calling it “very effective” in her community.
“Some states do better than others,” Turner said. “But overall, at large, the CDBG program has not been used for its intended purpose, either urban or rural.”
Capito asked the agency to be mindful of throwing “the baby out with the bathwater” when it came to the program and to instead invest more in what is working.
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., criticized Turner’s handling of Continuum of Care grants, which have been delayed by recissions, changes and myriad lawsuits over the past year.
“[In] my community, all the different organizations that benefit from Continuum of Care have been thrown into chaos and disarray,” Coons said.
Coons asked Turner to commit to implementing appropriations “in a timely and professional manner,” which Turner agreed to do.
“My concern is… you’re only implementing them once ordered to by a federal court,” Coons said, calling the delays “disruptive.”
Turner said that HUD would follow the law, but he maintained his belief that CoC is “a failed model.”
HUD last year asked Congress to approve drastic cuts to its budget, a request “resoundingly rejected” by the legislature, which increased the agency’s budget for programs by $7.2 billion, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
