Rent price-fixing by computer algorithms and keeping real estate from being used for money laundering through shell companies are two issues that Scott Turner, the former professional football player picked to lead the Department of Housing and Urban Development, will likely face at this committee confirmation hearing Thursday.
In a lengthy 13-page letter to Turner on Sunday obtained by HuffPost, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), the top Democrat on the Senate Banking Committee, laid out several areas she wants to hear more about when Turner appears before her committee for his confirmation hearing.
In her letter, Warren said there was “little in the public record” about Turner’s housing policy views and Turner should show up prepared to answer her questions.
Turner played seven seasons in the NFL through the 2003 season as a cornerback after playing collegiately at the University of Illinois. Later he served in the Texas state legislature. While his pick by President-elect Donald Trump was reportedly a surprise to many housing experts, he was the executive director of a White House interagency council in the first Trump administration tasked with overseeing Opportunity Zones, areas targeted for economic development through tax breaks.
In her letter, Warren asked for Turner’s views on rental price-fixing, citing the ongoing case against RealPage Inc., a company whose software the Department of Justice has alleged has been used by landlords to illegally set rental prices in violation of antitrust law. RealPage is fighting the case in court.
“Price fixing and other forms of collusion are illegal under antitrust law. However, companies like RealPage are allegedly enabling landlords to collude to raise rents using price-setting algorithms and non-public data. What steps do you think HUD should take to address algorithmic price fixing in the housing market?” Warren asked in the letter.
In another section, Warren cited praise of Turner by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), who said Turner would monitor investment in U.S. real estate by foreign “hostile actors.”
“Do you agree that it is important to maintain the bipartisan Corporate
Transparency Act’s beneficial ownership reporting requirements, which Congress concluded were critical to cracking down on malign actors seeking to conceal their ownership of entities in the United States to facilitate illicit activity like money laundering, the financing of terrorism, financial fraud, and acts of foreign corruption harming the national security interests of the United States?” Warren asked.
The Corporate Transparency Act was passed in 2021 and requires the ownership of shell companies be disclosed to the government as a way to help crack down on money laundering, tax fraud and other illicit activities.
The law’s constitutionality has been challenged in federal court and reporting is currently only voluntary after a Texas district court issued a nationwide injunction.
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The law has drawn ire from conservatives. In the Treasury Department section of Project 2025, a policy briefing book put together by the Heritage Foundation as a guide to incoming Trump administration officials, the authors wrote, “Congress should repeal the Corporate Transparency Act, and [the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network] should withdraw its poorly written and overbroad beneficial ownership reporting rule.”