WASHINGTON, D.C. – The head of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) said Thursday that he is reversing a policy that requires domestic violence shelters and other facilities to accept men in women’s spaces.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner, whom the Senate confirmed Wednesday, announced the change during a press briefing in Washington, D.C. as one of many ways he is terminating “far-left agenda items” in the agency. The Obama administration adopted the “gender identity” policy that bans “discrimination” against “transgender persons” in federally-funded housing.
Turner said scrapping the rule would “protect the ladies that are entering any HUD-funded facilities” such as abuse shelters and “get government out of the way of what the Lord established” regarding gender. His decision complies with President Donald Trump’s executive order restoring “biological truth” to federal agencies by recognizing male and female as the only two sexes, the secretary told the press.
I am honored and humbled to serve the American People and the Trump Administration as Secretary of @HUDgov.
Together, we will lower the cost of housing, expand supply, and empower all Americans to achieve the American Dream of home ownership.pic.twitter.com/ltK4pPQ3c7
— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) February 6, 2025
Former President Barack Obama’s HUD rule was proposed in 2012 and came into effect in 2016. The policy inserted “gender identity” into the meaning of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which makes it illegal for federally-funded facilities to refuse housing based on “race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.”
HUD under former Secretary Ben Carson proposed changing the rule in 2019 to give emergency shelters more leeway to refuse male access to women’s areas. The Biden administration later garnered praise from LGBT activists in 2021 by nixing Carson’s proposal.
Turner is now continuing Carson’s effort to reverse the Obama-backed policy, giving LGBT people “equal rights, but not extra rights,” he said.
HUD has also taken down pages of its website devoted to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and LGBTQ resources.
Turner discussed other plans to boost “efficiency” at HUD by forming a “DOGE task force” to cooperate with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in eliminating alleged government waste. “Our mission is to be good stewards over our taxpayer dollars,” Turner said.
Turner has made easing regulation central to his plan of making housing more affordable across the country. He enters his new job amid prices that reached record highs under former President Joe Biden. Turner blames the crisis in part on the government imposing “bureaucracy” and “red tape” on buyers.
Turner said HUD will make whatever personnel changes it needs to align with Trump’s agenda, regardless of potential “pushback.”
“Yes, I expect pushback because the status quo is not working,” Turner said. “My goal for HUD is that we move in one sound and one voice.”
On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) from removing men from women’s prisons as part of its effort to reverse another Biden-era transgender policy. The DOJ’s data show that men who identify as women comprise 1,538, or 15%, of inmates in women’s federal prisons.
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