Eric “Scott” Turner doesn’t have your typical Cabinet secretary background.
President Donald Trump‘s just-confirmed secretary of housing and urban development is perhaps best known for the nine seasons he spent playing cornerback in the NFL, more than double the length of his career in the Texas legislature, but he told the Washington Examiner that lessons he has learned both on the gridiron and in government will be essential for tackling one of the nation’s most pressing issues: the housing crisis.
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“HUD is a very special place,” Turner said in an exclusive interview. “It’s housing. It’s homelessness. It’s disaster recovery. We touch every family in America, directly or indirectly, and that is something that I consider to be a high calling. And so we want to utilize this assignment and this platform that we’ve been blessed with to make a generational impact on our country, to help people to realize the American dream and be on the trajectory to home ownership, to help people to fulfill their God-given potential, and to not only survive but, man, I want people to thrive.”
As for his previous career, Turner suggested he is bringing a “different vantage point” to the issues at hand but plans to build a team around him that can keep up with the rigors of his posting.
“I’m a team person, and I realize that no one person can do the job alone, and so having the right team — the right people in the right places doing the right assignment, moving in one sound and one voice — to me, that’s what a successful team is,” Turner said. “Being in professional sports, being in sports period has taught me great life lessons: how to overcome adversity, how to be humble in victory and steadfast in defeat, how to have a short memory. If you don’t win this time, get back up, get on the field, and run the next play.”
Like many of Trump’s other Cabinet nominees, Turner’s confirmation advanced out of committee along party lines in late January. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee ranking member Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said that, despite having some concerns about his nomination assuaged by his commitment to addressing the “housing supply crisis” in a bipartisan manner, she and the other committee Democrats would not vote for him because he had yet to complete an FBI background check.
“Mr. Turner will serve as a member of President Trump’s Cabinet and be in the line of presidential succession,” Warren said. “There is no reason to anticipate a problem, but it would be irresponsible for this committee to vote on a Cabinet nominee without his background check, and it would not be consistent with committee precedent.”
Turner was confirmed early Wednesday afternoon by a 55-44 vote. Sens. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Peter Welch (D-VT) were the lone Democrats to join Republicans in voting to confirm. Sen. Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) abstained from the vote.
Though a relative political novice compared to some of his other fellow Cabinet members, Turner does have a past working relationship with Trump. In 2019, the president appointed Turner to be the director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, where he and Trump’s first HUD secretary, Dr. Ben Carson, helmed the administration’s Opportunity Zone initiative.
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The program aimed to boost investment capital in underserved communities across the nation, and Turner credited that “transformative time” with preparing him for this new role. He specifically mentioned the need to involve all “stakeholders” in community-based decisions, including, but not limited to, local government officials, business leaders, and faith leaders.
Turner also had high praise for Carson, who he said has helped him develop as a leader over the past six years.
“Ben Carson is a very special man, certainly for our country, and he’s a special person in my life,” Turner told the Washington Examiner. “He’s been a great mentor to me. The word ‘encouragement’ is the word that comes to my mind. He has been a great encourager to me, a great teacher.”
“I can call him at any time, to lean on him, to ask him questions, to ask his advice, and I think that’s kind of a lost art in our generation,” he continued. “The younger generation today doesn’t like to sit with the older generation, but I’ve been so blessed to have great mentors in my life, including Dr. Carson, where you can just sit with them and listen to them.”
However, Turner says he did not specifically need Carson’s encouragement to accept Trump’s nomination this time around.
“No, he didn’t have to win me over,” he laughed. “This is my heart, to not only join the administration but more so to serve my country.”
Turner made no bones about the challenges facing him in this new role. Home and rent prices have skyrocketed since the Great Recession, while supply continues to lag behind national demand.
Incentivizing new construction is just one part of the solution. Turner said regulatory reform, a core tenet of Trump’s overriding agenda, will be a chief focus of his department.
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“There’s unique needs in every community,” Turner said. “Building homes is not a one-size-fits-all job, and so we have to look at the standard building codes. We have to look at permitting on a local level. We have to look at zoning. We have to look at height and density restrictions. We need millions of units of housing in our country, but the only way that we can continue to build or build more is to reduce the cost, to reduce the regulatory burden, to have public-private partnerships.”
Toward that end, Turner says he plans to quickly begin traveling the country to assess the immediate roadblocks negatively impacting particularly at-risk communities. That will likely include the greater Los Angeles area as the region grapples with rebuilding following the one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.
“I want to go to the people immediately,” the secretary said. “That’s how I like to operate, similar to how we dealt with opportunity zones — to go to the cities, to go and meet with the stakeholders, to identify what the problem is and see how we can come up with solutions. I consider my role as an ambassador and a champion for HUD to go out to the people and to bring solutions.”
Though Democrats have voiced some concerns about Turner’s nomination, Republicans appeared to welcome him with open arms.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), the chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, praised Turner as “the solution we have been looking for to enact a change at HUD and usher in a golden era of homeownership.”
“Secretary Turner and I agree that public service is a calling, and I know he will work diligently to find innovative solutions to our country’s most pressing issues,” Scott told the Washington Examiner. “I look forward to partnering with him over the next four years to build on our shared efforts to expand access to the American dream of homeownership and provide opportunity for more Americans.”
Still, there are two factors out of Turner’s control that could play a major factor in limiting HUD’s work: interest rates maintained by the Federal Reserve and the president’s quest to drastically cut total federal spending, which includes a full review and possible dissolution of department grant programs.
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In the face of these challenges, Turner vowed to “maximize the budget” he is afforded and threw his support behind Trump’s fiscal agenda.
“This is something that’s very important to the president, and it’s very important to me,” Turner told the Washington Examiner. “This is the mission of HUD: to build safe and sustainable communities. We have to get our fiscal house in order. High interest rates and high inflation make it very difficult to build affordable housing, and so I think it’s very important what the president is talking about.”
