The American Dream Is Dying. HUD Secretary Scott Turner Aims to Revive It.

This is a preview of this week’s episode of “The Signal Sitdown.” Don’t miss politics editor Bradley Devlin’s interview with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner by turning on YouTube notifications for the premiere at 11:00 a.m. EST on Sept. 9.

The American Dream is in crisis.

A study published by Pew Research last year found that only 42% of adults under 50 say the American dream is still attainable. The belief is bipartisan: Only 38% of Democrats under 50 and 48% of Republicans under 50 believe it is possible to achieve the American Dream.

President Donald Trump felt the storm gathering. He turned heads when he descended down the golden escalator of Trump Tower in 2015 and thundered that “sadly, the American Dream is dead.” He captured that lightning in a bottle not once but twice, observing that under former President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, “you don’t hear about the American Dream anymore—it’s dead.”

And what’s the American Dream without the white picket fence? Generations of Americans have grown up believing that owning a home has been a key tenet of living the American Dream, but homes are increasingly unaffordable. For this monumental task, Trump has tapped Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner. Turner joined “The Signal Sitdown” this week to discuss a housing crisis that isn’t just about houses—it’s about the soul of our homeland.

One reason why young Americans and their families feel the American Dream slipping away is the increasing unaffordability of a home for the average American. From the 1960s to the 1980s, the average house cost about three times the yearly median wage in America. Today, the average house costs seven times the yearly median wage.

Turner told The Daily Signal that “there’s several factors,” behind this trend. 

“The regulatory environment is crippling building,” Turner said. “Developers find it more difficult to develop, more difficult to build. And so at HUD we’ve been very intentional from day one of taking inventory of our regulatory environment and the regulations that we have.” Cuts to those regulations have already started, with the Trump administration working to undo the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, a Biden-era regulation that placed federal restrictions on using local land to build housing.

Illegal immigration has been another factor. “When you look at our country and how between 10 and 20 million people came into our country illegally,” Turner continued, “this has hindered our housing industry and caused housing prices to go up.”

To no surprise, the average rent has nearly doubled over the same time period housing has more than doubled, even when adjusted for inflation. It’s a double blow for young Americans and their families hoping to buy a home. Higher housing costs force young Americans into renting, and high rents means less savings to someday afford a house.

The result? Many Americans have been forced to delay buying a home. In 2008, the average age of a first-time homebuyer was about 30, and it had been that way for three decades. Less than two decades later, and the average age of a first-time homebuyer is 38—an all-time high.

Turner understands that having a country of renters is much different than a country of owners. 

“The American people, not only are they the one priority, they’re the only priority when it comes to HUD-funded housing,” Turner said. 

“We have to continue to work hard to make sure that those costs come down. When we came into this administration, our fiscal house was not in order,” Turner claimed. “The president and this administration under his leadership is getting our fiscal house in order.”

Putting the nation’s fiscal house in order is necessary “to help people live lives of self-sustainability, to help people to achieve their American Dream and home ownership, and to help people, really, to live out their God-given potential,” the HUD secretary added.

“The American home is the American Dream,” Turner said, “and at HUD we have the heart to help every American achieve the American Dream.”

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