President-elect Donald J. Trump has chosen Scott Turner, a little-known former pro football player and motivational speaker, to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, an agency that plays a central role in addressing the growing national affordability crisis.
Mr. Turner, 52, served as a midlevel official in the first Trump White House, where he headed a council overseeing federal opportunity zones, a program that leverages tax and other economic incentives to build affordable housing and promote economic growth in impoverished areas.
In that capacity, Mr. Turner helped “to lead an Unprecedented Effort that Transformed our Country’s most distressed communities,” Mr. Trump said in a statement announcing the pick on Friday.
Mr. Turner was one of several lesser-known staffing picks Mr. Trump made in a flurry of announcements on Friday, and initial reaction was mixed. Several low-income housing experts, contacted late Friday, said they did not know enough about Mr. Turner to make an assessment. But others praised the decision, based on his work during Mr. Trump’s first term.
“Scott Turner has a well-established commitment to community development and was a vocal advocate for investing in underserved communities in the first Trump administration,” said David M. Dworkin, the president and chief executive of the National Housing Conference.
Mr. Turner, a cornerback who played for three N.F.L. teams over a nine-year career that ended in 2004, becomes one of the few Black people chosen to fill a senior position in the administration during the transition. He served in the Texas House of Representatives as a Republican from 2013-17, then opted not to seek re-election after being trounced in a long-shot bid for speaker of the Texas House.
Mr. Turner is an associate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, just north of Dallas.
He has worked in a number of jobs since retiring from the N.F.L., including a stint at a software development firm, and an effort to start his own clothing line.
Most recently, he has been the chief visionary officer for a company that develops and manages properties in Dallas and Southern California, while serving as an adviser to Mr. Trump’s think tank, the America First Policy Institute.
Mr. Trump, who was accused of discriminating against minority renters during his long career as a developer and landlord, has signaled his intention to slash the federal bureaucracy, which could have a significant impact on the department’s work force.
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