In Brief:
- Reports suggest the Department of Government Efficiency could eliminate as much as half of the staff at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
- Advocates fear staff cuts, along with potential budget cuts in Congress, could affect housing programs and lead to increases in homelessness.
- A temporary funding freeze last month caused uncertainty for participants in the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program.
Agencies that administer housing-assistance programs are anticipating challenges as they monitor a series of proposals by Congress and the White House to cut federal programs.
The potential cuts range in type from the short-lived freeze on federal funding ordered by the Donald Trump administration to the ongoing reduction of federal agency workforces ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and congressional budget proposals that could reduce funding to housing-assistance programs.
Already, some White House moves have generated uncertainty within housing-assistance program operations. Public housing authorities were temporarily unable to access payment systems in the wake of the administration memo ordering a freeze on all federal funding, says Georgi Banna, general counsel for the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO). The memo was sent toward the end of last month, a time when agencies are typically accessing funds to distribute to landlords who participate in the Housing Choice Voucher program, which provides rent subsidies to landlords who lease to low-income tenants. There were some anxious calls from landlords who weren’t sure they were going to get their payments, Banna says. Agencies have never been cut off from those funds in the five decades of the voucher program, including during government shutdowns, Banna says.
“That’s a crack in the trust a little bit between HUD and the housing authorities and between the housing authorities and the landlords,” he says.
NAHRO has also raised concerns about the loss of senior staff at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the last few weeks, which it says could “result in both a leadership vacuum and the loss of both program experience and institutional knowledge.” HUD Secretary Scott Turner has said he is enlisting DOGE to identify waste, fraud and abuse in the department, a mandate broadly supported by Republicans in Congress and in some states. Earlier this month, DOGE announced that it had de-obligated $1.9 billion in HUD funds that were earmarked unnecessarily by the previous administration. Turner has also said the department has identified $260 million in savings, but hasn’t detailed the cuts. Reports have suggested that the Trump administration may seek to dismiss as much as half of HUD’s staff. Some advocates say reductions of that scale could lead to increases in homelessness.
“Terminating HUD staff will make it significantly harder for states and communities to access the congressionally approved federal investments needed to address their most pressing housing and homelessness challenges,” the National Low Income Housing Coalition wrote on its website. “As a direct consequence, homeless shelters will close their doors, communities will stop construction on new projects to build housing and community centers, households receiving rental assistance will face immediate rent increases and evictions, and communities, families, and small businesses impacted by disasters will be unable to rebuild.”
Congress is also starting negotiations around the federal budget. Republican leaders in Congress are aiming to reduce federal spending, but many cuts have yet to be detailed. The Republican-led House of Representatives passed a budget resolution last summer with flat funding for housing assistance programs. Because of inflation and rising rent costs, adopting that budget would create a $4.3 billion shortfall in the Housing Choice Voucher program, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank. That sort of shortfall, which would be the largest in the program’s 50-year history, could force agencies to remove people from waitlists or rescind vouchers from people who are already using them.
“That’s something that would be felt very quickly,” says Will Fischer, director of housing policy at the center.
While the Trump administration and Republicans historically have sought to shrink safety-net programs like those operated by HUD, the Section 8 voucher program hasn’t been their prime target, partly because it takes advantage of the private market to help provide housing for vulnerable people. Some Democrats have sought to expand the voucher program in recent years. Each state in the U.S. has thousands of residents using housing vouchers, but some states have many more than others. New York, Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., have the highest concentrations of voucher holders.
