Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner is dropping the hammer on former President Biden and his administration's "questionable" $5.8 billion in rental assistance payments.
Turner says that eye-watering amount, including payments sent to 30,000 dead people, wasn't accidental. Turner is calling it "systemic fraud by Biden and the Left" and vowing that "HUD will hold those who defrauded the American taxpayers accountable."
30,000 dead people receiving housing isn’t an accident — it was systematic fraud by Biden and the left.
— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) December 30, 2025
HUD will hold those who defrauded the American taxpayers accountable.https://t.co/GJW5IZEXER
According to The New York Post, the $5.8 billion went to those "questionable" recipients in the last year of Biden's term. In addition to the 30,000 deceased tenants, it's likely the money went to "thousands" of "potential non-citizens" too.
A "large concentration" of those payments went to New York, California, and Washington D.C., but deceased recipients in all 50 states got at least some of the funds. HUD officials called this a "widespread abuse of taxpayers' dollars under the Biden administration."
In a statement, Turner said, "A massive abuse of taxpayer dollars not only occurred under President [Joe] Biden’s watch, but was effectively incentivized by his administration’s failure to implement strong financial controls resulting in billions worth of potential improper payments. HUD will continue investigating the shocking results and will take appropriate action to hold bad actors accountable. Additionally, the Department is advancing efforts made under President Trump’s first administration to strengthen program integrity and ensure taxpayer-funded assistance serves the vulnerable communities it was intended for."
The $5.8 billion was more than ten percent of the $50 billion in federal rental assistance sent to public housing authorities and other non-federal entities in 2024, according to a 183-page report from HUD's Office of the Chief Financial Officer.
That money went to more than 200,000 possibly ineligible tenants, including those 30,000 dead, more than 9,000 non-citizens, and 165,000 who received "sums that exceeded the threshold for assistance in their geographic region."
A HUD official said the agency is "implementing processes and procedures to revoke or pause funding as part of its efforts to hold bad actors accountable."
$33 billion was spent on Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) between October 2023 and September 2024, impacting more than four million households, an $16 billion was spent on Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA).
An October 2022 audit found that HUD "needed significant improvement" in anti-fraud efforts in both TBRA and PBRA, and that officials were not assessing risk at all. By February of last year, prosecutors for the Southern District of New York charged 70 current and former employees of the New York City Housing Authority for taking cash kickbacks from contractors.
U.S. Attorney Damian Williams called that "the largest single-day bribery takedown in the history of the Justice Department."
Turner vows to keep shining a spotlight on the waste, fraud, and abuse of American taxpayers.
"For four years," Turner wrote on X, "the Left abused American taxpayers, and now light is exposing the darkness from Minnesota to D.C. to N.Y. to California."
For four years, the left abused American taxpayers, and now light is exposing darkness from Minnesota to D.C. to N.Y. to California.https://t.co/x3eagjQibG
— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) December 30, 2025
Of course, the Left will whine and sue the Trump administration over this, but thank goodness Turner and other officials seem determined to weed out and end the fraud.
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