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department of housing and urban development
DOGE’s Housing Department Cuts Will Make the Homelessness Crisis Worse
The Trump administration’s actions will mean that fewer people who struggle to keep a roof over their heads will get the help they need.
Mar 13, 2025
A record number of people are struggling to afford housing, and leaders from across the political spectrum have called for action.
But the Trump Administration, including Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) has taken one step after another that will undermine the most effective policies to help people afford housing, including cutting Housing and Urban Development (HUD) staff, withholding urgently needed funds, and making harmful policy changes.
In 2023, 24 million people lived in low-income households that paid over half their income in rent, forcing them to shift money away from other basic needs and often leaving them one setback away from eviction. In January 2024, 770,000 people across the country—an all-time high—couldn’t afford housing at all and were forced to live in shelters, cars, tents, or other unsafe and unstable circumstances.
Rather than squandering resources on costly tax cuts for the wealthy, policymakers should be expanding effective programs toward the goals of ending homelessness and ensuring everyone has a stable, affordable home.
Elon Musk and DOGE have reportedly called for discharging at least half of HUD staff overall, sometimes using tactics that may be illegal. Specifically, the proposals would cut:
- 50% of staff in the HUD office that administers vouchers, public housing, and Native American housing programs, which together help 7 million people afford housing;
- 44% in the office the oversees the project-based rental assistance program, which provides rental assistance to an additional 2 million people;
- 84% in the office that administers homelessness assistance and grants that help communities build affordable housing and recover from disasters; and
- 77% in the office that enforces fair housing laws—one of a series of administration actions that will severely weaken protections for people who face housing discrimination based on characteristics such as race, gender, and age.
Staff in these offices play a critical role in ensuring that tens of billions of dollars of badly needed federal funds are distributed promptly and used efficiently. Layoffs on the scale that DOGE is seeking will lead to delays and waste, resulting in people and communities around the country getting less help to address urgent needs.
In addition, the administration has interrupted the normal flow of HUD funds that are used to address housing needs, again sometimes through means that are likely illegal. HUD attempted in January to withhold funds as part of a broader federal funding freeze, which multiple federal courts have ordered the administration to temporarily halt while they review the action. HUD does not appear to have intentionally withheld funds for vouchers and other rental assistance so far, but the uncertainty created by administration policies has led to payment delays that could cause some landlords to stop accepting vouchers, making it harder for voucher holders to find homes they can rent.
Meanwhile, HUD has yet to deliver any of the $3.6 billion in homelessness assistance funding awarded January 17, which communities are counting on to provide rental assistance, shelter, outreach, and other services to people experiencing homelessness. While HUD notified at least some grantees that they will begin to receive funds soon, the uncertainty has disrupted community planning efforts and the final awards may include abrupt policy changes that could complicate implementation. The administration has also canceled contracts for organizations that help protect people from housing discrimination and provide technical assistance that plays a crucial role in effectively implementing HUD programs—even though the administration provided no evidence that the organizations were failing to perform as required.
Finally, HUD officials have proposed or discussed a series of policy changes that would make it harder for many people in need to receive housing assistance. HUD has said it will publish a rule rolling back non-discrimination protections that guarantee access to safe shelter and housing assistance for transgender and nonbinary people, who experience disproportionately high rates of homelessness. And it has already published a rule weakening fair housing requirements.
HUD officials have also called for evicting or cutting off rental assistance for people who don’t meet burdensome work requirements, a step that would increase administrative costs and expose many children, people with serious health conditions or caretaking responsibilities, and others to severe hardship.
Rather than squandering resources on costly tax cuts for the wealthy, policymakers should be expanding effective programs toward the goals of ending homelessness and ensuring everyone has a stable, affordable home. And they should make targeted reforms to address shortcomings of those programs to make them even more effective at addressing pressing housing needs. The administration’s actions will have the opposite effect, making it harder for people to afford housing and exit homelessness.
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Trump’s HUD Secretary and Our Reverse Robin Hood Housing System
A Trump-Turner housing agenda appears destined to continue the worst aspects of our nation’s approach to affordable housing: a relentless diversion to the already-wealthy of resources supposedly designated for the housing needs of the poor.
Jan 14, 2025
Donald Trump has nominated former Texas state representative Scott Turner as his secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the $70 billion federal agency that administers rental assistance and public housing programs, enforces fair housing laws, and provides community development grants to local communities.
Other Trump cabinet nominees, like potential Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have attracted attention for the ways they may shift the traditional priorities of the agencies they would lead. Turner has flown under the radar.
Perhaps that is because dramatic changes to HUD would need congressional approval, which was denied when Trump tried to slash the department during his first administration. Or maybe it is because, in many respects, Turner does not seem inclined to significantly alter U.S. housing policies.
As for likely HUD Secretary Turner, he is most associated with yet another housing giveaway to the rich.
That is not a good thing.
A Trump-Turner housing agenda appears destined to continue the worst aspects of our nation’s approach to affordable housing: a relentless diversion to the already-wealthy of resources supposedly designated for the housing needs of the poor.
This reverse Robin Hood approach to U.S. housing began in the 1970’s, when the Nixon administration and Congress began switching our affordable housing investment away from public housing to subsidizing for-profit landlords. Now, we fund wealthy landlords, often corporate landlords, via direct payments such as the Housing Choice Voucher program and Project-Based Section 8 program, in return for the for-profit landlords temporarily housing low-income tenants. 558F Low-Income Housing Tax Credits are designed to provide a tax shelter for wealthy investors.
This profit-soaked combination costs taxpayers six times more each year than public housing does. But public housing is far more efficient, for the simple reason that it bypasses private profits. Public housing is also hugely successful in providing high-quality, low-cost housing when there is adequate investment in maintenance and upkeep.
That is why other nations, who have far less homelessness, evictions, and housing-insecure people than we do, prioritize public housing. They divert little if any government support to for-profit landlords. And it is why U.S. for-profit landlords have been pushing for generations to block U.S. public housing from the funds it needs to ensure safety and keep up maintenance. The resulting deterioration of U.S. public housing undercuts competition for private landlords and creates a narrative justifying the delivery of housing dollars to the private sector.
A Subsidy for Gentrification
But those privatized programs are deeply flawed. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit often leads to rents higher than poor families can afford. The program known as LIHTC has been characterized by housing researchers as “a better-than-nothing gimmick that helps the poor by rewarding the rich.” Even that characterization is too generous for some legislators, who call LIHTC “legalized theft of government assets.”
Similarly, project-based Section 8 housing directs government dollars to for-profit landlords as payment for low-income tenants’ rent. But, like LIHTC, the program allows those landlords to convert their buildings to market-rate rentals after they use the government subsidies to pay off their debt on the properties. By contrast, public housing provides affordable housing in perpetuity.
There is even less lasting impact coming from the largest low-income housing program in the country, Housing Choice Vouchers. We provide a full $30 billion per year in voucher payments to landlords, often large corporate landlords, but those landlords can end their involvement at the end of each tenant’s lease, leaving the low-income renter without housing. It is another low-risk high-yield arrangement for the wealthy and raw deal for the poor: little wonder that the Project 2025 blueprint drafted by Trump supporters champions vouchers even as it slams other HUD programs.
As for likely HUD Secretary Turner, he is most associated with yet another housing giveaway to the rich. During Trump’s first administration, Turner served as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, which focused on promoting opportunity zones, a program created by Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
The program rewards the wealthy’s investment in economically distressed areas—opportunity zones—with huge tax breaks. But investigations by ProPublica and Congress show that the definition of what areas count as opportunity zones is far too broad, and the guidelines for who benefits from the investments are far too loose. As a result, money invested in expensive hotels, high-rent apartment buildings, and even luxury condominiums as a superyacht marina escapes taxation. Politically connected billionaires lobby for the land where they develop to be designated an opportunity zone, then rake in the benefits.
The Brookings Institution says opportunity zones operate as a subsidy for gentrification. “The direct tax benefits of opportunity zones will flow overwhelmingly to wealthy investors,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says. “But the tax break might not do much to help low-income communities, and it could even harm some current residents of such communities.”
So, despite the relative quiet around Scott Turner’s nomination, we know some important things about him. We know that he champions opportunity zones as an addition to the already abundant tax benefits the U.S. showers on landlords and real estate investors. And we know that he is a fierce critic of anti-poverty programs, as he has made multiple public statements about government assistance being harmful and even disastrous.
But we also know that the likely next HUD secretary is concerned about that alleged harm only when assistance is provided to the poor. The wealthy can count on Trump and Turner to keep the pipeline of government housing money wide open and flowing their way.
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Ocasio-Cortez, Smith Push Bill to Create Social Housing Authority
"Because we believe that housing is a human right, like food or healthcare, we believe that more Americans deserve the option of social housing."
Sep 18, 2024
"It's becoming nearly impossible for working-class people to buy and keep a roof over their heads. Congress must respond with a plan that matches the scale of this crisis."
That's according to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), who on Wednesday introduced the Homes Act in a New York Timesopinion piece and an event with supporters of the proposal on Capitol Hill.
"Because we believe that housing is a human right, like food or healthcare, we believe that more Americans deserve the option of social housing," the pair wrote in the Times. "That's why we're introducing the Homes Act, a plan to establish a new, federally backed development authority to finance and build homes in big cities and small towns across America. These homes would be built to last by union workers and then turned over to entities that agree to manage them for permanent affordability: public and tribal housing authorities, cooperatives, tenant unions, community land trusts, nonprofits, and local governments."
"Our housing development authority wouldn't be focused on maximizing profit or returns to shareholders," the congresswomen continued. "Rent would be capped at 25% of a household's adjusted annual gross income. Homes would be set aside for lower-income families in mixed-income buildings and communities. And every home would be built to modern, efficient standards, which would cut residents' utility costs. Renters wouldn't have to worry about the prospect of a big corporation buying up the building and evicting everyone. Some could even come together to purchase their buildings outright."
In addition to establishing the new authority under the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the bill would repeal the Faircloth Amendment, which prevents the use of federal money for building new public homes. Under the new plan, construction would be funded by congressional spending and Treasury-backed loans.
"In New York, the average worker would need to clock in 104 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom apartment," Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement. "This country is staring down a full-blown housing crisis. A crisis where affordable housing is slipping out of reach."
"This bill would create more than 500,000 jobs and create 1.25 million affordable housing units," she noted, declaring that "everyone deserves a place to call home."
It's not just New York City where lower-wage people are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Smith pointed out that "more than 90% of workers cannot afford a modest one-bedroom apartment. Americans across the country are bidding for homes against the wealthiest financial firms and they're losing."
"We have a severe housing crisis," she stressed. "The private market cannot meet this moment on its own. The Homes Act meets peoples' needs through social housing."
As Jacobin's Samuel Stein wrote Wednesday:
The housing system sketched out in the Homes Act looks nothing like what we are used to in the United States. Though we have an important social housing legacy, we have never normalized decommodification as the cornerstone of our housing system.
Introducing legislation like the Homes Act does not accomplish that goal in and of itself, but it offers us a concrete depiction of what that transition could look like. It also highlights the severe disjuncture between what our housing and urban planning system does right now—promote private profits in real estate while minimizing the public provision of housing—and what we need it to do.
The goal of legislation like this is not to pass it immediately, since no sober person would expect the current U.S. Congress to line up in support. Nor is the goal to supplant the messy work of organizing with the schematic and technical language of legislation. Instead, the point is to inspire organizing: to show that the status quo is not the only way our housing could operate, to give tenant organizations a concrete and affirmative vision to build toward, and to offer socialist candidates for office a platform to run on.
The bill to create a social housing authority—introduced less than two months out from the U.S. general election—is backed by the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and its affiliates from across the country.
"Working families are being forced to make sacrifices in order to pay the skyrocketing cost of keeping a roof over their heads, while corporate landlords and Wall Street executives are getting even richer," said CPD co-executive directors Analilia Mejia and DaMareo Cooper. "This legislation provides a clear alternative to for-profit housing. It creates a framework to make community-owned, permanently affordable green social housing a reality."
Advocates from both sponsors' states also spoke out in favor of the bill.
"In Greater Minnesota, counties and towns don't have staff to build affordable housing projects, financing is another huge issue. We don’t have as many philanthropic organizations or financial institutions as urban areas," explained Noah Hobbs, policy director at One Roof Community Housing in Duluth. "This bill is the first real investment we've had in years. We're incredibly proud to endorse this legislation."
Aisha Hernandez, secretary of the Coalition to Save Affordable Housing at Co-op City in the Bronx, said that "cooperative housing gave me the ability to co-own my home. A few years ago, my neighbors and I came together to ensure our housing stays affordable, that our management is working in the interest of homeowners and prevent any corporate takeover of Co-op City."
"We are co-owners, not at the whims of corporate landlords," Hernandez added. "I want my fellow Americans to have the same access to housing that co-op has afforded me. This bill has the ability to do that. So let's get it done."
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