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The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced in a post on X Friday that it had recovered $1.9 billion in HUD funds that “were earmarked for the administration of financial services, but were no longer needed.”
The post reads: “$1.9 billion of HUD money was just recovered after being misplaced during the Biden administration due to a broken process. These funds were earmarked for the administration of financial services, but were no longer needed.”
The group added that it worked in concert with HUD Secretary Scott Turner to “fix the issue and de-[obligate] the funds which are now available for other use by the Treasury.”
Musk magnified DOGE’s results in his own post on X, “It is astounding how much taxpayer money can be saved with even a small amount of effort.”
No other information on the recovered funds has been released by the administration.
In the post, screenshots of unredacted documents displayed tax and address information for Dallas-based mortgage servicer Selene Finance and Anaheim-based mortgage lender and servicer Carrington Mortgage Services.
News outlet NOTUS reported that while the current version of the post redacts some of the identifying information from the highlighted contracts, an earlier version which remains visible in the post’s edit history exposes potentially sensitive tax information from the private companies.
“The screenshots of documents attached to the original post, which DOGE published at 3:24 p.m., included sensitive company information such as the names, addresses and signatures of the government contractors as well as their tax ID numbers,” the report stated. “The original post was viewed more than 2 million times, according to the metrics listed on X.”
HUD has been under fire in the second Trump administration, with the agency expected to cut 50% of its workforce.
Among the reported targets of HUD cuts by DOGE include offices that enforce civil rights laws, that compile housing market data and which are focused on post-disaster recovery and rebuilding. An attorney with housing industry and policy experience who spoke with HousingWire characterized the potential impacts as striking “at some of HUD’s essential functions.”
