adminThe nation is facing a housing emergency and HUD Secretary Scott Turner is blunt about it: America needs roughly seven million additional housing units to meet demand and ease sky-high prices that are crushing working families. This is not a theoretical problem for think-tank elites — it’s real pain at the kitchen table for teachers, truckers, and young families trying to get a fair shot at the American dream.
Secretary Turner, who was confirmed to lead HUD in February 2025 after serving in the Trump White House, is finally bringing common-sense Republican solutions to a department long corrupted by costly regulations and woke mandates. He knows the private sector builds homes, not federal planners, and his background running Opportunity Zone programs gives him the practical chops to get projects moving instead of stalled under piles of paperwork.
The answer from this administration has been clear: tear down the regulatory obstacles that have strangled construction, stop weaponizing housing rules against faith-based and community providers, and unleash federal and private land for development. Turner has rightly targeted burdensome rules like AFFH and pushed creative ideas — including using underutilized federal land and streamlining permitting — so builders can actually build. Conservatives should rejoice when Washington finally chooses production over performative regulation.
Some on the left will crow about “market fixes” while refusing to admit their policies and open-border advocacy helped create demand without supply, but the bottom line for Americans is this: mortgage costs have eased materially from last year’s peaks, with 30-year rates sliding into the low sixes — a break for buyers, though still far from the pandemic-era freebies. That reality proves the point: sensible policy, stability, and market confidence lower costs — not more government mandates and virtue signaling.
Turner’s approach also recognizes a second truth Democrats refuse to confront: uncontrolled illegal immigration is a strain on scarce housing, schools, and resources in red and blue cities alike. Requiring accurate data, tightening eligibility for taxpayer-funded housing, and insisting on accountability are common-sense steps that protect rightful citizens and taxpayers. It’s about fairness — Americans who work and pay taxes should not be last in line because Washington refuses to secure the border.
Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers and private developers are offering concrete plans to increase supply — from the ROAD to Housing Act to expanded Opportunity Zone investments and block-grant experiments that restore power to states. Those proposals recognize that local zoning, environmental streamlining, and innovative financing are the levers that can produce millions of homes without turning every American neighborhood into a federal diktat. If Washington truly wants results, it will cut red tape and let families and builders get to work.
Hardworking Americans are tired of excuses and glossy studies; they want houses they can afford, mortgages they can carry, and neighborhoods where their kids can thrive. Secretary Turner and this administration are moving in the right direction by prioritizing supply, dismantling the worst of the regulation, and partnering with the private sector — now Congress must stop the partisan theater and pass the reforms that will turn a seven-million-unit shortfall into an opportunity for renewed American greatness.
