Gay congressman presses HUD Secretary Scott Turner over agency’s retreat from LGBTQ+ housing protections

The Trump administration says it is making progress on housing discrimination by shrinking its backlog of complaints. U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres wants to know what that progress means for LGBTQ+ people whose cases the government has stopped investigating.

In a letter to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner obtained exclusively by The Advocate, the New York Democrat demands records on complaints involving sexual orientation and gender identity, political oversight of investigators, and staffing losses.

“The Department’s obligation is to enforce the law, not to redefine discrimination out of existence,” Torres writes.

The letter demands answers and supporting data by November 1.

Torres, an out gay Afro-Latino Democrat representing New York’s 15th Congressional District in the Bronx, grew up in public housing. Before he was elected to Congress in 2020, he chaired the New York City Council’s public housing committee.

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What a smaller backlog leaves unanswered

HUD announced in June that it had reduced its overall fair housing case backlog by 27 percent. It highlighted 15 recent enforcement actions involving allegations including sexual harassment, disability discrimination, and discrimination against families with children.

“Every one of these actions represents an American whose rights deserved protection,” Turner said in the announcement.

But the Government Accountability Office said in a September report released publicly on October 14 that it could not independently verify the reduction because HUD did not provide requested information about changes to its processes.

Torres wants HUD to distinguish completed investigations and settlements from administrative closures, dismissals without full investigations, and halted cases. Separately, he requests monthly, regional data showing what happened to sexual orientation and gender identity complaints since January 20, 2025.

HUD did not respond by publication to The Advocate’s questions about LGBTQ+ discrimination complaints and its reported backlog reduction.

ProPublica reported last year that HUD rejected an Arkansas gay man’s housing discrimination complaint after Trump returned to office, saying allegations like his were outside federal law.

“Housing is not a privilege reserved for those whom the presidential administration considers politically acceptable,” Torres writes. “It is the foundation upon which Americans build their lives, raise their families, maintain employment, and pursue prosperity.”

His letter also asks whether political appointees require advance approval for routine investigative work, which discrimination categories HUD has deprioritized, and how fair housing staffing compares with January 2025.

GAO found that HUD’s overall workforce shrank by 29 percent in 2025.

Related: New York Dem Ritchie Torres discusses the fight for LGBTQ+ representation as election looms

A broader retreat from LGBTQ+ housing protections

The inquiry follows changes affecting where LGBTQ+ people can find emergency shelter.

The Advocate reported in April that HUD proposed allowing federally funded shelters to make placement decisions based on sex assigned at birth and seek evidence of a person’s sex. The proposal raised concerns that transgender women fleeing abuse could be turned away and other women subjected to scrutiny based on their appearance.

In June, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Jeff Merkley led 22 colleagues in urging HUD to withdraw the proposal, which would also remove explicit references to sexual orientation from department regulations.

HUD defended the proposal as protecting women’s privacy and safety and providers’ religious freedom.

Turner had already halted enforcement of HUD’s 2016 gender identity rule in February 2025. That rule and the Fair Housing Act complaint process provide distinct protections.

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In 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court found in Bostock v. Clayton County that federal employment law protects gay and transgender workers from sex discrimination. In 2021, under President Joe Biden’s administration, HUD applied that reasoning to the Fair Housing Act.

Torres now wants records showing what the administration’s enforcement choices have meant for people seeking protection.

“HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity was created to protect Americans from discrimination, not to protect discriminators from accountability,” he writes. “No administration has the right to turn federal civil rights protections into a political suggestion.”