HUD Secretary Scott Turner on The Flag’s What’s On Your Mind
WASHINGTON — Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner visited Montana to outline key federal initiatives centered on foster youth independence, Opportunity Zone investments, and federal regulatory relief for homeownership.
During a radio interview On The Flag, Secretary Turner explained the “threefold reason” for his visit alongside Governor Greg Gianforte, noting they hosted a Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) roundtable—a program partnered with First Lady Melania Trump. He also toured an Opportunity Zone at Montana State University’s “EngineWorks” incubator—which he described as an “incredible innovative incubator for entrepreneurship, science, quantum computing, and a lot of technology”—and met with the Montana State football team, calling the interaction “an added bonus”.
Addressing HUD’s work with young adults aging out of foster care, Turner emphasized the crucial need to address housing instability.
“The First Lady is very passionate about the next generation of leaders, particularly foster youth,” he said. “About 20,000 young people age out of foster care each year, and about a quarter of those, 25%, end up or experience a level of homelessness within four years after transitioning out of foster care.”
He added that HUD has “supported over 1,700 youth with approximately about $23 million in Foster Youth to Independence funding” to ensure they “land in a safe, sustainable, solid place for housing.”
Turner also pointed to the economic impact of Opportunity Zones created under the 2018 tax cuts.
“Over the last five or six years, there’s been over $100 billion that have been invested into America’s most distressed communities,” he stated, noting it led to “about 500,000 new jobs, 400,000 new housing units, and a million people have been lifted out of poverty.”
On housing affordability, Turner focused on reducing regulatory barriers to boost home production.
“A single-family home today in America, the median price is over $400,000, and $100,000 of that is in regulatory costs,” he said. “That is unsustainable in our country. That’s why it makes it harder to build and it makes it harder to buy.”
