ICYMI | Secretary Turner Op-Ed in Fox News Digital: “Homeownership is making a comeback thanks to Trump, but there’s more to come”

The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule was a 2015 HUD regulation implementing a long‑standing requirement in the Fair Housing Act that HUD and recipients of its money must actively promote fair housing, not just avoid discrimination.

The rule required many HUD grantees (such as cities, states, and public housing agencies that receive HUD block grants) to:

• Conduct a formal “Assessment of Fair Housing” using HUD-provided data and local input to identify patterns of segregation, racially or ethnically concentrated areas of poverty, discrimination, and unequal access to good schools, jobs, and transportation.
• Set measurable, locally chosen goals to reduce those barriers and expand fair housing choice.
• Integrate those goals into their regular HUD planning documents (like Consolidated Plans and Public Housing Agency Plans) and certify that they were taking “meaningful actions” to further fair housing.

In short, AFFH required jurisdictions that take HUD funds to analyze how their policies affect segregation and opportunity, and then make and follow a plan to improve fair housing outcomes.

The PAVE task force was the Interagency Task Force on Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity, created by the Biden administration in 2021.

It brought together 13 federal agencies (including HUD, CFPB, FDIC, and others) with the stated purpose of:

• Studying and documenting racial and ethnic bias in home appraisals.
• Developing an “Action Plan” with policy changes, enforcement steps, data collection, and industry guidance to “root out racial and ethnic bias in home valuations” and make the appraisal process more fair for homeowners and communities of color.

So, PAVE was a government-wide effort focused specifically on identifying, reducing, and preventing discrimination and bias in residential property appraisals.

An FHA‑insured mortgage is a home loan made by a private lender but insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), an agency within HUD. If the borrower defaults, FHA pays the lender’s claim, which allows lenders to offer loans to borrowers who might not qualify for conventional mortgages.

Key features:

• Lower down payments (often as low as 3.5% if credit scores are sufficient).
• More flexible credit and debt‑to‑income standards than many conventional loans.
• The home must be the borrower’s primary residence and meet FHA property standards.

Eligibility (in general):

• The borrower must meet FHA’s credit, income, and underwriting standards and be of legal age.
• FHA guidance has long required borrowers to have a valid Social Security number and lawful residency in the U.S.
• Recent Trump‑era policy changes (Mortgagee Letter 2025‑09) further limit FHA‑insured loans mainly to U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and certain citizens of designated Pacific Island nations, excluding many non‑permanent residents.

So FHA‑insured mortgages are primarily aimed at owner‑occupant buyers who can document income and lawful status but have limited savings or weaker credit.

Ginnie Mae is the Government National Mortgage Association, a government corporation housed within HUD.

It does not make loans itself. Instead, it:

• Guarantees the timely payment of principal and interest on mortgage‑backed securities (MBS) that are created from pools of federally backed loans, including Veterans Affairs (VA) home loans, FHA loans, and others.
• Private lenders and issuers bundle VA‑guaranteed mortgages into these Ginnie Mae MBS; Ginnie Mae’s guarantee makes the securities safer and more attractive to investors worldwide.

By providing this guarantee on VA‑loan MBS, Ginnie Mae helps lenders quickly sell their VA loans into the secondary market and get their money back, which “provides liquidity” — i.e., it frees up capital so lenders can keep making new VA loans to veterans and service members.

Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” (sometimes called the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act or OBBB/OBBBA) is a 2025 federal tax law (Public Law 119‑21) that, among many tax changes, significantly rewrites and makes permanent the Qualified Opportunity Zone (QOZ) program.

Based on IRS, congressional, and policy analyses, major Opportunity Zone–related changes include:

• Making the QOZ program permanent instead of having its main benefits expire after 2026.
• Allowing “rolling” or extended capital-gains deferral and new timing rules for when investors must recognize gains.
• Creating new categories such as Rural Opportunity Zones and tightening or adjusting zone designations and reporting requirements.
• Modifying investor incentives (e.g., step‑ups in basis, holding‑period rules) to encourage longer‑term and larger‑scale investments in designated low‑income communities.

In short, the Act turns Opportunity Zones from a time‑limited experiment into a permanent, more structured part of the federal tax code, with the goal of attracting more private capital into designated communities while reshaping the tax treatment of capital gains invested there.

According to HUD’s own description, the new hotline is a national phone and online reporting system intended to collect tips about serious criminal activity in HUD‑funded housing, which the department and allied media have also described as a way to report “illegal residents.”

How it works (per HUD’s November 2025 announcement):

• It operates as a centralized “crime hotline” where people can report individuals in HUD‑assisted properties who are allegedly engaged in crimes such as drug distribution, violent crime, domestic violence, human trafficking, sex offenses, gang activity, or fraud.
• Reports can be submitted by phone or online; callers can provide information such as the property, people involved, and nature of the suspected activity.
• HUD says information will be shared with appropriate law‑enforcement partners to investigate and, where warranted, pursue enforcement against those threatening tenant safety.

Who can submit reports:

• HUD’s release does not limit it to tenants; it invites “the public” to use the hotline to report suspected criminal activity in HUD‑funded housing.

Public information does not yet spell out detailed procedures (e.g., anonymity, evidentiary standards, or how immigration‑status tips are handled), beyond stating that the hotline is for reporting crime and safety threats in HUD housing.

HUD’s ability to deny FHA‑insured mortgages to undocumented immigrants rests on a combination of existing FHA rules about lawful residency and a 2025 policy change that tightens those rules.

Legal and policy basis:

• FHA’s long‑standing underwriting handbook requires borrowers to have a valid Social Security number, be of legal age, and be “lawfully present” in the U.S. to be eligible for FHA insurance.
• A 2025 HUD policy (Mortgagee Letter 2025‑09, summarized in multiple industry and legal reports) revised residency requirements by eliminating the “non‑permanent resident” category and limiting FHA‑insured loans to:
  • U.S. citizens,
  • Lawful permanent residents (with DHS/USCIS documentation), and
  • Certain citizens of specified Pacific Island nations.
• This effectively excludes undocumented immigrants and most non‑permanent visa holders from FHA‑insured mortgages. HUD publicly framed this as enforcing existing law that “non‑U.S. citizens without lawful residency in the U.S. are not eligible for FHA‑insured mortgages.”

Known legal challenges:

• As of the latest reporting, trade publications and immigration‑law analyses describe the rule change and its impacts on non‑citizen borrowers but do not report any finalized major court rulings specifically overturning or blocking this 2025 HUD residency policy.
• There are indications that advocacy and industry groups are considering or preparing legal challenges, but no definitive, widely reported successful lawsuit against this specific FHA residency tightening has yet been documented in public sources.

So HUD is relying on its regulatory authority under the National Housing Act and its existing FHA eligibility rules about lawful presence, newly interpreted and tightened in 2025, and any direct legal challenges to this specific change are either not yet resolved or not yet publicly prominent.