Joe.My.God. LGBT News
ProPublica reports:
The findings were stark. In one investigation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development concluded that a Texas state agency had steered $1 billion in disaster mitigation money away from Houston and nearby communities of color after Hurricane Harvey inundated the region in 2017. In another investigation, HUD found that a homeowners association outside of Dallas had created rules to kick poor Black people out of their neighborhood.
The episodes amounted to egregious violations of civil rights laws, officials at the housing agency believed — enough to warrant litigation against the alleged culprits. That, at least, was the view during the presidency of Joe Biden. After the Trump administration took over, HUD quietly took steps that will likely kill both cases, according to three officials familiar with the matter.
Those steps were extremely unusual. Current and former HUD officials said they could not recall the housing agency ever pulling back cases of this magnitude in which the agency had found evidence of discrimination.
From a December ProPublica report:
As Donald Trump’s nominee to run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner [photo] may soon oversee the nation’s efforts to build affordable apartments, protect poor tenants and aid the homeless. As a lawmaker in the Texas House of Representatives, Turner voted against those very initiatives.
Turner supported a bill ensuring landlords could refuse apartments to applicants because they received federal housing assistance. He opposed a bill to expand affordable rental housing. He voted against funding public-private partnerships to support the homeless and against two bills that called merely to study homelessness among young people and veterans.
Behind those votes lay a deep-seated skepticism about the value of government efforts to alleviate poverty, a skepticism that Turner has voiced again and again. He has called welfare “dangerous, harmful” and “one of the most destructive things for the family.”
Turner, whose best friend is Dr. Stabby, was confirmed last month in a 55-44 Senate vote and was sworn-in hours later by Clarence Thomas.
New: The government spent years probing allegations that a Dallas HOA created rules to kick poor Black people out and that Texas discriminated against minority residents in Houston after Hurricane Harvey, only to suddenly reverse course under Trump. https://t.co/ftB9u2He9W
— ProPublica (@propublica) March 25, 2025