Even one of Donald Trump’s top housing officials needs help buying a home amid the United States’ affordability crisis.
Benjamin Hobbs, the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s assistant secretary for public and Indian housing, has reportedly been raising money for a home down payment through his online wedding registry ahead of his nuptials to Madison Greif, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
Hobbs’ fundraising stands in stark contrast to his publicly stated goals as assistant secretary. During an interview with a local newspaper in his native Ohio last year, Hobbs vowed to: “Promote work and economic self-sufficiency, to break the cycle of generational poverty.”
“I think the most important part of [HUD’s] mission is to provide [financial or housing] assistance in such a manner that it doesn’t trap these families into a life cycle of dependency,” he said last year.
The Trump appointee’s use of the wedding registry app Zola to solicit funds also raises ethical questions, experts told the Post. In his position, Hobbs oversees all of HUD’s public housing programs—raising the possibility that lobbyists and politicians could donate to his home down payment in an effort to curry favor.
“You have to be extra careful, almost paranoid, about the various means and modes someone might try to influence you, even if they aren’t telling you that’s what they’re doing,” Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, acting vice president of policy and government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Post.
The Denison University graduate, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment, is an alumnus of Trump’s first term, where he served as special assistant to the president for domestic policy. Prior to that, he was a Welfare Studies Fellow at The Heritage Foundation, the organization behind Project 2025.
Hobbs’ attempt to fund a home purchase underscores growing strain in the housing market during the president’s second term. Last month, realtors raised alarms over the highest January prices on record and slowed sales nationwide, something National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun has called “a new housing crisis.” He stressed that buyers are “struggling,” and that movement in the market is “not happening.”
“Americans are stuck,” he said.
At the same time, the president, 79, has dismissed concerns about affordability, going so far as to call it a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats in December.
The Daily Beast has reached out to HUD for comment.
A spokesperson told the Washington Post that Hobbs “is in compliance with all relevant laws and will not accept any improper gifts.”
“Thanks to the largest tax cut for working families in American history, Mr. Hobbs now has confidence in the housing market, and if family and friends wish to help his pursuit of the American Dream, they are welcome to do so as ethics has approved such gifts for a once-in-a-lifetime joyous occasion,” agency spokesperson Robbie Myers told the outlet.
