Scott Turner, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, addresses reporters outside a Fayetteville public housing complex on April 22, 2025 as Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Congressman Steve Womack listen. (Antoinette Grajeda/Arkansas Advocate)
State and federal leaders discussed using federal funding effectively to address affordable housing issues during a visit by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to Northwest Arkansas Tuesday.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner spent the day visiting with high school students and learning about the impact of Opportunity Zone projects, among other things, at U.S. Rep. Steve Womack’s invitation. An invitation to Womack’s Washington colleagues also resulted in the National Institutes of Health director visiting Arkansas in October.
Womack is the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development and Related Agencies. Following a tour of Hillcrest Towers, a 120-unit public housing complex in Fayetteville for tenants 55 and older and/or disabled, Womack told reporters the emphasis on the transportation side of appropriations will be on the Federal Aviation Administration.
“The housing side, the goal, the objective was to make sure in a time of declining resources and potential cuts, we don’t want one person losing the housing that they have enjoyed,” Womack said.
President Donald Trump in March signed a continuing resolution that will fund the government through Sept. 30 and included an additional $4.6 billion for HUD programs, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Womack said there will be challenges to writing the fiscal year 2026 appropriation bills.
“Notably the fact that the amount of money that’s set aside for discretionary spending continues to shrink over time because of the impact on the entitlement programs and the fact that that side of the balance sheet is growing exponentially,” he said. “So we will always have a challenge, and there will be emerging needs.”
Entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are included in mandatory spending that Congress is required to fund. They make up almost two-thirds of the federal budget, according to Everything Policy.
Turner said his agency doesn’t hold the purse strings, so it’s HUD’s job to “maximize the budget that we do have and make sure that we’re very efficient and effective” about the resources his team distributes. At the same time, the agency’s goal is not to grow the amount of people who need government assistance, but rather “get people off subsidies and live a life of self-sustainability,” Turner said.
“So working with nonprofits, working with faith-based institutions, working with some of the public-private partnerships like I’ve seen done so well here in Northwest Arkansas, I believe that that’s the way that we can attack this situation and attack the problem,” he said.
One of the public-private partnerships Turner learned about during his visit was McAuley Place, a project that aims to provide affordable housing to Bentonville School District employees who are often priced out of living where they work.
The state’s role in addressing affordable housing, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, is “working very closely” with the state’s congressional delegation and the Trump administration. A lot of funding for affordable housing programs comes from the federal government, and Sanders said it’s important to look at whether money is being spent “efficiently and effectively.” While that’s often the case, there’s still room for improvement, she said.
“I think it’s one of the things that President Trump is really delivering on is taking a holistic approach to where are we spending money, how can we do a better job, how can we be more modern, more efficient, more innovative,” Sanders said. “When we’re $36 trillion in debt, we have to do a better job of spending the money we have in a better and more effective way.”
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