HUD announces launch of DOGE task force, targets AFFH rule

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Thursday officially announced the launch of a task force that will collaborate with billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), which currently operates out of the White House.

The task force is designed to “review how HUD is spending American taxpayer dollars,” in alignment with executive orders issued by President Donald Trump that have mandated severe cuts to the numbers of federal workers on the government’s payroll.

HUD explained that the task force “will be composed of HUD employees who will examine how to best maximize the agency’s budget and ensure all programs, processes and personnel are working together to advance the purpose of the department,” echoing a priority shared by HUD Secretary Scott Turner during his Senate confirmation hearing last month. 

The task force will “meet regularly and report its findings and suggestions” to Turner, who established the task force to align with an executive order seeking “to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,” the department said.

“HUD will be detailed and deliberate about every dollar spent to serve rural, tribal and urban communities,” Turner said in a statement. “Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, we are no longer in a business-as-usual posture and the DOGE task force will play a critical role in helping to identify and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse and ultimately better serve the American people. We have already identified over $260 million in savings and we have more to accomplish.”

Sources of the $260 million in savings were not identified by the department. HUD’s announcement was published the same day that reports about mass layoffs at HUD began emerging in the media.

While the HUD announcement makes no mention of large-scale reductions in force, Bloomberg Law cited Antonio Gaines, president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) National Council 222, who stated that “the department will cut employees in the offices that enforce civil rights laws, compile data about the housing market, and pay to rebuild communities after disasters,” according to the report.

The department also highlighted a recent appearance by Turner on a talk show hosted by Charlie Kirk, a conservative political commentator. In that interview, Turner said he was positioning the department to once again rollback the affirmatively furthering fair housing (AFFH) rule, which was originally enacted during the Obama administration.

During the first Trump administration, then-HUD Secretary Ben Carson took several actions against the AFFH rule. In 2017, Carson explained that HUD would seek to “reinterpret” the rule.The following year, Carson’s HUD sought to delay the rule from going into effect, inviting legal challenges.

Then in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic and after floating potential amendments to the rule, Carson’s HUD sought instead to abolish it outright. In the summer of 2021, the Biden administration published a rule in the Federal Register to restore AFFH definitions and certifications, but last year invited scrutiny from fair housing advocates around a perceived lack of action to further codify the rule.

But on the Kirk program, Turner explained that HUD will pursue a rescission of the rule.

“We are going after AFFH to restore the power, the flexibility, the rule-making authority back to localities, back to states because they understand their needs,” Turner said. “They understand the needs they have in their local neighborhoods. The federal government should not be heavy-handed mandating how people zone, or how people build in different localities.”