Scott Turner, the new secretary for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is considering a new name for the agency. I have one for him to consider — the Department of Housing Opportunity. Here’s why:
In a Nov. 20, 2024, opinion piece, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy stated their hopes that, as a 250th birthday gift to the country, the Department of Government Efficiency would “deliver a federal government that would make our Founders proud.”
Recommended cuts haven’t been detailed, but with the recent action taken to close USAID, Musk and his team have made it clear they are serious about hunting down and eliminating special interest spending, fluff, and waste.
However, poor financial stewardship is only the outer layer of an onion whose core is slowly killing America. I hope they’ll keep peeling and get to the deeper issues of government dependency. That’s because there’s a human cost to many federal programs that breaches our Founders’ idea of a republic.
Established and funded by D.C. elites, these programs have tentacles that reach into every community across our nation. Tragically, they fail to deliver real results, doling out handouts that meet superficial needs only and trap tens of millions of Americans in a morphine drip of learned helplessness.
Just to assure you we have a problem, consider that at the launch of Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty in 1965, one out of every 30 working age males was without a job. The same source now dismally reports one out of 10 are jobless. Over the same period, welfare spending rose tenfold from $121 billion (adjusted) to $1.2 trillion today. Most of that increase is the result of upping individual transfers. The result of these failed efforts is that far too many Americans have lost agency, dignity, and the joy of earned success.
As the new administration seeks to reverse course and deliver something that would make our Founders proud, we should remember the Department of Housing and Urban Development has been a major cause of the problem. The very name would have met with the Founders’ disdain; as would the first director’s intent (published in 1964) to “recover control of the way land is used so as to achieve a proper type of development of our urban areas” Additionally, the purpose of the bill giving President Johnson authority to create the department was “to promote orderly urban development, to improve living environment in urban areas, and to extend and amend laws relating to housing, urban renewal, and community facilities.”
Well, I hope we’ve learned our lesson. When the federal government takes “control of the way land is used” to “promote orderly urban development,” all hell breaks loose. Okay, not literally. But close. Homelessness grew a record 18 percent last year as cities struggled in the mire of sprawling homeless camps, drug addiction, and mental illness.
We should have listened to John Lynn of the American Farm Bureau when, in April 1965, he saw the writing on the wall. He told Congress, “The implication is that the Federal Government is going to perform a much larger role in the future than it has in the past with respect to what appears to us to be a private and local responsibility.… We are appalled with respect to the variety of scope and programs contained in the Housing Bill.”
A much larger role, indeed — and its effect has been appalling. This year, taxpayers are coughing up more than ever for HUD programs, funding the largest increase in its history. The 11 percent increase over last year equals more than $70 billion, advancing HUD’s “All In” homeless plan, which doubles down on the failed idea that free housing is the primary answer to the complexities of homelessness.
Free housing vouchers are distributed by community organizations that clamber for HUD funding every year through Continuums of Care (local collaboratives HUD requires in order to receive federal grants). I’ve sat in on too many of those discouraging meetings, watching organizations figure out how to pull down more dollars from D.C.
It’s a scramble that results in the strangest incentives. Last week, I tried to encourage a 42-year-old able-bodied homeless man to come in off the streets, get a job, and save his money. “Nah,” he replied, “I’m waiting on my HUD housing voucher.” Moreover, someone at the agency promising him a free roof over his head told him a job would hurt his chances for that housing.
Our Founders never envisioned the federal government funding urban development, housing initiatives, or homeless solutions — and as we’ve seen, with good reason. Good-hearted bureaucrats too often believe providing services only will solve the problem.
Yet, we don’t need more service provision. We need opportunity provision — which is significantly different. Capitalizing on it requires effort from the recipient. Conversely, one-way receipt of services requires only that one is poor and in need. Instead, we should replace public welfare, free housing vouchers, and other handouts with real opportunity for the poor.
That will come through a robust, vibrant marketplace partnering with personalized, relational charity to inspire and challenge individuals. Turner’s intent to switch out the current Housing First plan with Opportunity Zones that incentivize local involvement and private giving is a good start. I hope he’ll not only give it a makeover by renaming it the “Department of Housing Opportunity” but a full renovation that reflects the Founder’s hopes: a nation in which the ideals of individual freedom and personal responsibility are valued and upheld. Go D.O.H.O!
James Whitford is co-founder and executive director of Watered Gardens Ministries in Joplin, Missouri and True Charity, which exists to champion the resurgence of civil society in the fight against poverty. He is also the author of The Crisis of Dependency: How Our Efforts to Solve Poverty Are Trapping People in It and What We Can Do to Foster Freedom Instead.