Public and Indian Housing Office Funds Both Urban Housing Projects and Rez Housing

Photo: President Trump and 2025 HUD Secretary nominee, Scott Turner at 2021 HBCU Conference. Turner will head the office of Public and Indian Housing as part of his HUD duties, photo the White House, Wikimedia Commons

Public and Indian  Housing have been supervised by the same federal agency since 1937. In fact, the office of Public and Indian Housing (PIH) was part of the Department of the Interior from 1937 until 1942. Yes, Public Housing was, for a time, supervised by the same agency that oversaw the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

Currently, PIH is supervised by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Public Housing and the Office of Native American Programs (ONAP) have been part of HUD since 1965.

Yes, “the Projects” and “the Rez” have housing financed by the same federal agency. The occasional claim from Black residents that “the Projects are our reservations,” is somewhat true.

From  public housing’s earliest conception in New York City in 1933, the Public Welfare Authority (PWA) had Black Americans in mind. The PWA built 22,000 units of housing and reserved half of them for Black families. 

When the federal government picked up the baton in 1937, it grouped Black people and American Indians together in creating the PIH, putting both communities under the Department of the Interior, which still today manages federally-recognized Indian tribes via the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). 

But ONAP (Office of Native American Programs)  within HUD serves communities beyond American Indians and Alaskan Natives (AIAN). It also serves Native Hawaiians.

For some reason, both Republican and Democratic presidents have appointed Black Americans as HUD (Housing and Urban Development) Secretaries. President Bush Jr  appointed Alphonso Jackson in 2004, President Trump appointed Dr. Ben Carson in 2017; President Biden appointed Marcia L. Fudge in 2021; and lastly, President-elect Trump has appointed Scott Turner, also a Black American, to run HUD in 2025. 

HUD Secretary seems to be a “Black job,” as Trump himself might say, and this Black job is to fund housing on Indian reservations, urban housing projects and housing in American Samoa, the Kingdom of Hawai’i, and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico. 

Scott Turner was appointed by Trump in 2021 to lead a council on helping distressed communities.  It is likely that Turner will push Trump’s agenda to reduce the amount of public housing on a nationwide basis. This could include the sale of currently public housing to private developers. 

In the past, this has meant providing Section 8 (or ‘Housing choice’) vouchers for public housing residents when their apartments are demolished.

Altogether, HUD says it serves 3.5 million people; 1.56 million in public housing and  2.3 million via Section 8 vouchers. (Which actually adds up to 3.9 million).  Housing on the grounds of Tribal nations (reservations) are usually operated directly by the Tribes and only funded indirectly by PIH, so their residents may not appear on HUD’s statistics. 

As for ethnic breakdown of public housing residents in 2021, Blacks made up 27% of all public housing residents, followed by non-Hispanic Whites (24%), and Latinos (10.8%). “Race not reported” was actually the largest category at 33%. 

Agenda 2025’s (The likely Trump playbook for his next term) chapter on HUD, written by former HUD Secretary Dr Ben Carson, says very little about Public and Indian Housing (PIH), except to describe its basic functions,  so it is very difficult to guess what might be in store for the future of PIH and the people who depend on it.

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Sources: 

Jennifer Ludden, “Trump names former Texas state Rep. Scott Turner to lead Housing and Urban Development,” November 22, 2024, npr.org.

Indian Housing’s Office of Native American Programs (ONAP), US Department of Public and Indian Housing, https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/public_indian_housing/ih

“About PIH,” Public and Indian Housing, US Department of Public and Indian Housing, https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/public_indian_housing/about

Dr. Ben Carson, Sr, MD “Department of Housing and Urban Development,” published in Agenda 2025: Mandate of Leadership, 2024, at Agenda 2025 Presidential Transition Project, the Heritage Foundation.

Table 4, “Race/ethnicity of Heads of Household,”  p. 5 of 13 in “Tenants in LIHTC Units as of December 31, 2021, released by US Department of Housing and Urban Development and linked by Jennifer Schwartz of NCSHA.org

“Office of Public and Indian Housing,” Wikipedia.

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