WASHINGTON – During a Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs hearing to consider the nomination of Eric Scott Turner to be Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) questioned the nominee about his plans to protect housing stability for mixed-status families and to maintain critical housing grants for Native American communities in Arizona.
GALLEGO: As you know, Arizona is at the forefront of housing scarcity on all fronts, whether it is apartments, whether it’s housing, whether it’s new, old. And it’s not just the metro areas. It’s even the rural areas. I am always looking for a comprehensive solution, as well of course as dealing with rising homelessness, which are all kind of attached to this. We talked about a couple of areas in my office, and I want to reiterate, especially for our families right now that cannot afford housing. Last year, I introduced the Housing Vouchers Fairness Act to address increasing demand for affordable housing choice vouchers in our fastest growing cities. For my colleagues here, what that basically means is there are some areas in this country that are not using their housing vouchers largely because of either bad administrative process or the fact that you guys are losing population. Places like Arizona, Nevada, Texas, and Florida have a demand for these housing vouchers. As I said before, HUD has the right to reallocate those vouchers when they are not being used. I want a commitment that we could look at that. It would actually help put a lot of people off the streets and into housing. Especially if they are not being used anywhere else, they should be effectively used somewhere.
TURNER: Yes sir, Senator, and it was great to visit with you and hear your passion for your state and constituents. I do commit to working with you and looking further into that as you said.
GALLEGO: One of the things we see in Arizona and all over the country is that we have lots of families in different situations. We do see mixed-status families. I agree with a lot of my colleagues here, if you are an illegal immigrant, you should not be receiving any subsidized housing. If you’re two illegal immigrants living together, you should not be receiving any federal subsidized housing. But I am concerned about mixed-status families, and that happens a lot in our world. We have one parent who is an American [and one] who is illegally here, or has a child that is an American. In the past, under HUD Secretary Carson, there has been some rulemaking that would potentially put those types of families on the streets when we already have a housing shortage as we’re hearing. The other thing to remember in terms of these mixed-status families, a lot of times the secondary parent may actually at one point become a legal citizen. I’d like to make sure you understand and do not rush to kick people out of their homes, because you are likely kicking out a couple of Americans in the process. Again, I overall agree with the sentiment, we should not be using federal dollars or tax dollars to house illegal immigrants. But when it comes to making some of our American families homeless, we have to be careful about how we execute that. I want to make sure you understand and work through that in the process also.
TURNER: Thank you, Senator.
GALLEGO: If you understand the mixed-status family situation: American kid, American parent, undocumented parent — would you say that is something that would be a reason to evict these families from federal housing?
TURNER: If confirmed by this committee as the Secretary of HUD, we have to take care of American citizens and American families. It is not only the right thing to do. It is not just what we are called to do. It is the law. Even right now, we are not serving the amount of American families that we have been called to serve. As the HUD Secretary if confirmed by you and this committee, my job would be to uphold the laws of the books. I know oftentimes we have to make hard decisions, because we do not like to tear up families. But we have an obligation to serve the American people and uphold the laws.
GALLEGO: Recognize these are American people. They are just in a situation where they are married to someone who is undocumented. This is why I’m asking specifically; to make sure you understand that there is a nuance and all we are going to do is create more Americans who are going to be homeless if we rush to evictions.
Other areas I would like to talk about is in regards to the Native American housing block grants. The president in his previous administration had tried to demand some cuts to that, grants to tribes and housing entities, to support housing and development. Arizona has 22 federally recognized tribes. It is a massive portion of our population. But they actually have a housing crisis. Whenever there are cuts that are made, it is going to significantly impact these communities because a lot of these communities do not have access to other private funds in order for them to build up their housing. I really wanted to know, do you support the president’s proposals to cut funding for HUD assisted housing for Native Americans, going forward? In the past, we cannot do much there.
TURNER: I have to look into that program and that proposal. Thank you for bringing that to my attention. As we talked about before, Native American tribes have the same difficulty in affordable housing, because of the tribal trust and other factors. As we talked [about] before also, Opportunity Zones are a great vehicle to build affordable housing, including on our tribes. I am committed to seeing how we can continue to build more affordable housing for our tribes and across the country, and I look forward to working with you on that particular issue. As far as the proposal, I have to take a deeper dive into that.