Congressional oversight hearings are often performative on all sides, but they do serve to actually conduct oversight and assess how policies are being implemented and their effectiveness.
Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) was trying to ask HUD Secretary Scott Turner about his department’s policies on homelessness.
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Turner said, “What I will say, and I offer this, is number one, the point in time report in the Biden administration HUD said that we had 770,000 people in America that were homeless at one given time, and this is with record funding. So we have record funding, but yet we have an increase in street homelessness.”
Sen. Gillibrand asked, “ So what is your record? You’ve had this job for well over a year. I just wanna know, did you get the number down? Do we have 700,000 homeless still, or is it a million or a million point five? So I get you wanna do things differently. Indeed. And this committee will support you as long as the goals are good. But where’s the results? The report is delayed. Over a year…I just don’t wanna hear about what you don’t like about the Biden administration. You’re in charge. You have a vision. Let’s see it.”
Gillibrand’s question was more than fair. She was suggesting that she understood that a different administration would want to change policies, but she is open-minded, and if the policies help the homeless, she is willing to be supportive.