The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has a total workforce of roughly 9,600 staffers. Last week, the new Trump-appointed HUD director, Scott Turner, was ordered to lay off about half of HUDs employees, or nearly 4,300 people. The move comes from a recommendation by Trumps Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, directed by Elon Musk. The downsizing could have serious ramifications for building projects that rely on HUD financing and also low-income households that depend on HUD to pay rent.Antonio Gaines, president of HUD Council 222 of the American Federation of Government Employees, told Bloomberg Law that employees tasked with enforcing civil rights laws, compiling housing market data, affordable housing construction, and post-disaster relief will bear the brunt of the firings.HUDs downsizing would likely make it harder for low-income families to pay housing costs, including those with Section 8 vouchers; to preserve and build affordable housing; and support homeless shelters. It will also limit access to data that researchers rely upon to identify and address inequities in the built environment.The mandate came around the same time the Trump administration ordered the GSA to sell off a wide array of the properties it owns and/or leases,creating an uncertain future for a number of remarkable buildings, including ones designed by Mies van der Rohe, Walter Gropius, and Victor Lundy. Under New LeadershipHUDs new director, Scott Turner, is a former NFL player turned politician. He previously worked in Trumps first administration as the executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council after serving as a representative from Texas. He was confirmed to lead HUD in a 5544 vote on February 5.Turner has since created his own internal DOGE task force, modeled after the one Musk helms. HUD will be detailed and deliberate about every dollar spent to serve rural, tribal and urban communities, Turner said in a statement about the move.Thanks to President Trumps leadership, we are no longer in a business-as-usual posture and the DOGE task force will play a critical role in helping to identify and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse and ultimately better serve the American people, Turner continued. We have already identified over $260 millionin savings and we have more to accomplish. Later, Musks DOGE announced it had located $1.9 billion that was misplaced during the Biden administration due to a broken process. These funds were earmarked for the administration of financial services, but were no longer needed. Now the monies have been recovered.Following the PlaybookThe plan for downsizing HUD was outlined several months ago in the Heritage Foundations Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise,a922-page document otherwise known as Project 2025.InChapter 15 of the Project 2025 guidebook, former HUD director Ben Carson outlined major policy changes hed like to see: Carson suggested devolving many HUD functions to states and localities. So-called Indian housing, for instance, might be moved from HUD to the Department of the Interior.Project 2025 was said to be a Christian nationalist initiative.It appears many of the plans strategies are now being enacted, and some of its shapers have been elevated to government roles, like Russell Vought, who again directs the Office of Management and Budget. He is referred to as an architect of Project 2025.Many of Heritage Foundations backers are real estate developers. The think tank was founded in 1973 by Joseph Coors, the Coors beer magnate, to help cut taxes for the uber wealthy. Its other sponsors include ExxonMobil, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Shell, Dow Chemical, General Motors, Pfizer, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, Altria (which produces Marlboro cigarettes), and hundreds of other corporations.Democrats Resist?In response to the anticipated HUD layoffs, on February 16, Democratic senators shared a letter to demand that Trump and Musk halt the HUD cuts. It was signed by Kirsten Gillibrand, Patty Murray, Chuck Schumer, Tina Smith, and Elizabeth Warren. The authors warned that reductions could jeopardize seniors, homeless veterans and HUDs capacity to address the nations housing crisis.The letter states that between 2012 and 2019, HUDs staffing levels fell by over 20 percent, and independent audits repeatedly pointed to capacity gaps across HUD. Its text reminds Turner that his own address to HUDs workforce on February 6 highlighted the many challenges facing HUD and communities: a housing affordability crisis, homelessness, and disaster recovery efforts and that President Trump, on his first day in office, signed an executive order to defeat the cost-of-living crisis. President Trumps reckless threats of blanket tariffs on friendly nations could drive up housing costs, deter new development, and slow rebuilding efforts in disaster-impacted communities. Freezing already obligated funds, cancelling necessary program contracts, and hastily gutting HUDs workforce will inevitably lead to costly delays, and many housing projects will fall apart completely, only making our current housing crisis worse, the senators wrote. They urge Turner to immediately stop any additional cuts to HUDs workforce and furnish ten questions that they want answered by February 21.Federal Housing Administration WoesAnother HUD component on the chopping block is the Federal Housing Administration. Created by Congress in 1934 and integrated into HUD in 1965, the entity provides mortgage insurance for individuals who might not otherwise qualify for coverage. The agency insures mortgages on single family homes, multifamily properties, residential care facilities, and hospitals throughout the United States and its territories.According to reporting on February 18, in Bloomberg, at least 40 percent of the operations staff are at risk of being laid off.The next morning, on February 19, HUD rebuked these claims when a spokesperson told CNN that suggestions FHA will cut about half its workforce are not accurate. According to CNN, the FHA is currently one of the largest mortgage insurers in the world and is actively insuring over 8 million single-family mortgages and thousands of mortgages for multifamily properties and health care facilities.The FHA generates income for the U.S. government through loans that generative a positive return. As reported in Bloomberg, the FHAs Mutual Mortgage Fund grew from $145 billion to $173 billion in capital over the last fiscal year, with a capital ratio of 11.47%. One staffer described the agency as the goose that laid the golden egg.Disaster ReliefThe downsizing could throw a wrench in climate resiliency and disaster relief efforts, too. The Green and Resilient Retrofit Program has been targeted for cancellation by Turners HUD administration.Created by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, it awarded more than $1 billion to private companies to help them upgrade apartment buildings for HUD-subsidized tenants, making them more energy efficient, according to NPR. The companies whove been awarded the upgrade money have not spent most of it yet, because real estate deals take years. The HUD staffer told of the cancellation said that means thousands of construction and other jobs the program generates might now be lost.Last October, Hurricane Helene decimated parts of North Carolina and Tennessee. Sarah Labowitz, aWashington Post contributor and nonresident scholar at Carnegie Endowment for International Peaces Sustainability, told AN that reconstruction funding for uninsured households will come from HUDs Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery money.With this latest round of proposed cuts, disaster relief in North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and other locales impacted by global warming hangs in a state of uncertainty.