Former North Texas Lawmaker, NFL Player Tapped to Lead Housing and Urban Development
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President-elect Donald Trump announced on Friday evening that he’s nominating former Texas lawmaker and D-FW native Scott Turner to head up the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Scott will work alongside me to Make America Great Again for EVERY American,” Trump wrote in a statement touting his pick’s accomplishments.
Turner, a former NFL player and motivational speaker who served two terms in the Texas House of Representatives, is a veteran of the first Trump administration. Serving under then-HUD Secretary Ben Carson, he held the post of executive director on the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council (WHORC). The body focused on stimulating economic activity in distressed communities.
Responding to Friday’s announcement, Turner thanked the president-elect on X and praised Carson, who he called his mentor.
“Few people are as compassionate and gracious as he is, and I am aware that I have big shoes to fill,” Turner said.
What to expect from HUD under Turner
As previously reported by CandysDirt.com, Carson’s tenure at the helm of Housing and Urban Development was largely spent cost-cutting and reversing Obama-era housing rules. He penned his HUD prescriptions for a second Trump administration in a chapter of the controversial conservative governance playbook Project 2025.
On top of reversing the Biden administration’s HUD policies, Carson wants to reverse the department’s “mission creep.” In the chapter, he argues for political appointees to “re-examine the federal government’s role in housing markets across the nation and consider whether it is time for a ‘reform, reinvention, and renewal’ that transfers Department functions to separate federal agencies, states, and localities.”
HUD was created in 1965, subsuming several different housing-related agencies and streamlining the implementation of various programs. Its portfolio has grown over the decades, with the department taking up the responsibility of enforcing fair housing laws and administering community development grants and Section 8 rental assistance, among other duties.
It would be no surprise if Turner pursued Carson’s aims, especially since they align with Trump’s broader deregulatory push across the administrative state. However, unlike during Trump’s first term, the nation faces a serious housing crunch. Complicating the situation further are some of the president-elect’s other campaign promises — particularly tariffs and the mass deportation of undocumented workers — which stand to have inflationary effects on the construction sector.
Turner’s previous work under Trump, Carson
In 2019, then-President Trump tapped Turner to serve as executive director for WHORC. Chaired by Carson, WHORC brought together multiple federal agencies to assess what could be done to “minimize all regulatory and administrative costs and burdens that discourage public and private investment in urban and economically distressed communities.”
Significant tax benefits were bestowed on investments into areas that qualified as Opportunity Zones, a designation created under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
Trump called Turner’s WHORC work “an unprecedented effort that transformed our country’s most distressed communities.”
“Those efforts, working together with former HUD Secretary Ben Carson, were maximized by Scott’s guidance in overseeing 16 federal agencies which implemented more than 200 policy actions furthering economic development. Under Scott’s leadership, Opportunity Zones received over $50 billion in private investment,” Trump wrote on Friday.
Following his stint at WHORC, Turner founded the Community Engagement & Opportunity Council, a nonprofit dedicated to faith-based community uplift initiatives. He was also made chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for Education Opportunity, which seeks to advance “school choice” as a solution to underperformance in public education.
Who is Scott Turner?
Football fans might recognize Turner from his time on the field in the 1990s and early 2000s as a defensive back for the Denver Broncos, San Diego Chargers, and Washington Redskins. He converted on his NFL career to enter politics — first as an intern for former Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA), then as a candidate for office.
Turner unsuccessfully ran for Congress in California in 2006, yielding a poor showing in the Republican primary for the state’s 50th congressional district. Not letting the setback deter him, he moved back to Texas where he had much better luck. He won the Republican nomination to represent Texas House District 33 (Collin and Rockwall counties) in 2012 and defeated Libertarian candidate Michael Carrasco in the general to take the seat. Turner served another term after that before declining to run for re-election.
He is married and serves as an associate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano.
