HousingWireHousingWire
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has accessed U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) confidential data related to housing discrimination, according to a report from non-profit investigative journalism outlet ProPublica.
ProPublica said its findings are based on information obtained and confirmed through HUD sources.
The report states that DOGE has gained access to records “containing confidential personal information about hundreds of thousands of alleged victims of housing discrimination, including victims of domestic violence.”
HUD’s Enforcement Management System contains medical records, financial files, documents that may list Social Security numbers and other private information.
DOGE requested access with HUD granting it last week, ProPublica said in its Wednesday report.
Efforts to collect data across numerous federal agencies have met strong resistance, including lawsuits accusing DOGE of privacy violations.
Courts have placed a temporary hold on DOGE’s access to data at the Department of the Treasury, Department of Education and Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
“It’s difficult to see why a system dedicated to civil rights complaints would have any impact whatsoever on a department looking for inefficiencies in governmental spending,” Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told ProPublica. “There is deep concern that DOGE is not there to identify government inefficiencies, but rather to shutter programs that the administration disagrees with.”
A February memo pointed to DOGE plans to drastically cut the HUD workforce with many direct ramifications set to be felt by the Federal Housing Administration, one of the largest mortgage insurers in the world.
A U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C., recently cleared the way for mass layoffs of federal employees when he ruled that four labor unions that filed suit against the Trump administration needed to file a complaint with the Federal Labor Relations Authority instead.
The American Federation of Government Employees‘ National Council of HUD Locals 222, which represents more than 5,300 HUD workers, issued a cease and desist letter to HUD and OPM on Feb. 23, stating that DOGE data collecting violates collective bargaining agreements and employee privacy.
