SEC TURNER: Homeownership is making a comeback thanks to Trump, but there’s more to come
In his recent address to the American people, President Donald Trump said: "Eleven months ago, I inherited a mess. And I’m fixing it."
When it comes to the border, Trump inherited a catastrophe. Border security became a joke under the Biden administration, which allowed millions of illegal aliens to rush into our country. This travesty did not only make a mockery of our laws, it also increased demand for affordable housing, which in turn increased housing costs for American families.
A recent Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report revealed that foreign-born migrants accounted for two-thirds of the growth in rental demand across the country. Some places, such as California and New York, saw a 100% growth in migrant-fueled rental demand.
Outrageously, some illegals even received HUD’s housing help, siphoning taxpayer dollars away from American citizens. Under Trump’s leadership, HUD is ending this insanity. We cut off illegals from receiving FHA-insured mortgages and announced a hotline to report illegal residents in HUD housing, along with other criminals, because public housing must be safe housing. We are taking decisive action to ensure HUD-funded programs and resources are not benefiting ineligible individuals or illegals.
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The mess that Trump is fixing goes beyond immigration, and over the past year, HUD has scored win after win to restore sanity and good sense to housing policy. We are putting the American Dream of homeownership back within the grasp of the American people by promoting deregulation, self-sufficiency, and common sense.
We started by scrapping the Biden-era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. The Biden administration’s negligence in enforcing border security was only matched by its zeal in imposing burdensome regulations on innocent Americans, and the AFFH rule burdened America’s suburbs with red tape. Ending this regulation was a critical step in restoring freedom to local communities.
You cannot regulate your way to prosperity. But you can innovate.
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That is one of America’s core strengths, along with market-based solutions and private sector ingenuity. At Trump’s direction, we are recalibrating HUD away from overregulation and toward supporting these key tenets of our economy.
That is why I am a longtime champion of Opportunity Zones. This landmark policy has lifted more than 1 million Americans out of poverty. And Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which is the largest working family tax cut in modern history, enhances Opportunity Zones permanently. Opportunity Zones are now expected to support over $100 billion of investment, create more than 1 million new jobs, and facilitate construction of hundreds of thousands of new homes.
I’ve personally been to 13 Opportunity Zones in Florida, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Georgia and other states, and I’ve witnessed how lives are being transformed.
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I visited a vacant factory space in Green Bay, Wisconsin that was redeveloped into a mixed-use space with affordable homes and thriving businesses; a $5 billion development in Atlanta, Georgia, offering new housing and office spaces; and a factory using cutting-edge methods to build modular homes in Columbus, Ohio. I have spoken to business owners, workers and residents who have seen their downtown areas being rejuvenated, and I have seen the new life animating these places.
Of course, HUD still delivers crucial housing assistance and the numbers prove it.
This year we helped more than 1 million Americans achieve the American Dream of homeownership by insuring mortgages through HUD’s Federal Housing Administration. This is in addition to the work of HUD’s Government National Mortgage Association, or Ginnie Mae, which provided critical liquidity for more than 430,000 Veterans Affairs loans.
And to combat homelessness, we welcomed more than 350,000 faith-based organizations back to the table as partners to provide care for the most vulnerable and help them achieve self-sufficiency instead of permanent government dependence.
In addition to supporting homeownership, HUD also assists Americans whose homes were damaged or destroyed in natural disasters. This year, we delivered $12 billion in disaster recovery funds to hurting communities that were affected by floods, storms and other catastrophes.
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I personally visited California, North Carolina, and my own beloved state of Texas to meet with survivors of wildfires, storms and floods, hear their needs and see how HUD can help them recover from the wreckage.
But HUD cannot properly focus on such important work when our resources and energy are wasted by promoting radical political ideology.
That’s why our anti-wokeness campaign involved canceling $250 million in wasteful contracts and disbanding the PAVE task force, which disrupted housing markets to supposedly address so-called "systemic biases." We also restored safety to HUD shelters for vulnerable women by ending enforcement of a Biden-era rule that allowed men to invade these safe havens. Finally, in cities like Boston, we held local leaders accountable and launched an investigation into illegal, race-based housing policies.
There is more for us to do next year and beyond, but our achievements in 2025 have laid a foundation of success on which we will continue to build. As we approach our great nation’s 250th birthday, HUD will continue protecting and promoting independence and self-sufficiency as the keys to the American Dream of homeownership.