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homelessness
Passports Welcome Here: The Importance of Crossing Borders at the Library
Back new bills now up for review to support libraries in providing passport application services, particularly in communities where it can be difficult or intimidating for people to use other federal offices.
Feb 28, 2026
Recent public announcements that many public libraries could no longer accept passport applications surprised many.
In a now unusual attempt at bicameral and bipartisan legislation, Rep. John Joyce (R-Pa.) and Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), have put forth bills (H.R.6997 and S.3733) that would enable all public libraries, whether they are organized as units of government or nonprofit organizations, to serve as passport acceptance facilities designated by the State Department.
As a university educator in Library and Information Science, I was at first taken aback by the passport application ban attempt. Many others were surprised that libraries had been accepting passport applications. But then perhaps neither the service nor the attempt to shut it down are a surprise at all.
Public libraries across the nation are an integral piece of our social and civic infrastructure. Librarians see up close the needs for social services in their communities, and they step up to meet those needs.
Libraries are where people step from one world into another, sometimes by opening books and sometimes by sharing space with people very different from themselves.
Libraries provide internet access for people who do not have the resources to get online from home or may not have a home where they can get online. Libraries provide physical shelter, in times of climate emergency like extreme heatwaves or intense freezes. They provide shelter for people who need to get off the street for a few hours to find a safe place. Recently, they have begin offering telehealth booths to support medical care in remote communities.
Libraries promote literacy, a lynchpin of economic security for both individuals and the communities in which they live. Indeed, there is considerable research demonstrating that there are higher literacy rates in communities with access to a public library, particularly in low income and rural areas.
There are approximately 17,000 public libraries in the United States, a number that has remained remarkably stable in the past few decades. Despite funding difficulties, skepticism about the value of physical libraries in the digital era, and political and social challenges to library collections, libraries remain at the center, meeting many of those communities’ needs.
Of course, it is perfect that libraries were places to apply for passports as they are places of border crossing. Libraries are where people step from one world into another, sometimes by opening books and sometimes by sharing space with people very different from themselves.
There is a public library that famously straddles the Vermont-Canada border where you can literally step across a border. That quiet fame has grown louder now that it plays a key role in Louise Penny’s latest novel, The Black Wolf.
To step into the world of the library at most you’ll need a library card. Everyone is welcome.
To be sure, not every library looks like it welcomes all people with open arms. Legacy architecture and practices can perpetuate the perception of the library as hushed and exclusive.
The precarity of funding for public libraries often prevents libraries from addressing that perception. Many libraries aspire to renovating and modernizing their spaces in ways that they simply cannot afford. Public libraries rely upon local taxpayers for much of their funding, but they also rely upon federal grants to innovate and develop new initiatives.
Nearly one year ago, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order intended to dismantle the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services, the Institute for Museum and Library Services. The agency awards almost $300,000,000 in grants every year, including more than $160 million that goes to states and largely supports the work of public libraries.
The executive order was successfully challenged in court by the attorneys general of 21 states, and on November 21 of last year, the US District Court for the District of Rhode Island struck down the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
One result of this victory is that last month, IMLS awarded for eight projects “dedicated to building AI literacy.” Once again, libraries see a need and step up to meet it.
Many people voice public criticism and concern about the use of public libraries. Critics complain that they are overrun with noisy teens after school, socializing and playing video games. Some complain libraries are filled with sleeping, foul-smelling people who experience homelessness, or that they are opening the doors for children to step into obscenity.
But it is crucial to see the critical need for accessible public libraries in this country. It is important to support these bills now up for review to support libraries in providing passport application services, particularly in communities where it can be difficult or intimidating for people to use other federal offices.
More than that, it is essential for the country for policymakers, funders, and all Americans to support libraries through ensuring funding, community advocacy, and moral support. It is crucial to help libraries continue to be places where everyone can cross borders and step into new worlds.
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The Republican Policy of Making More People Homeless
More people than ever are being forced into homelessness or are spending more than half their income on rent.
Dec 21, 2025
As Congress continues to negotiate the next set of funding bills before the upcoming deadline at the end of January, policymakers must ensure sufficient and timely funding for critical housing and homelessness programs. These programs help millions of people afford housing, a basic need. But proposed cuts could leave more than 600,000 people struggling to pay the rent — a sizable share of whom would then be at high risk of eviction and homelessness (see table here for details by state). Congress should instead use a final 2026 funding bill to keep people in their homes and support communities’ efforts to make housing more affordable for everyone.
The Administration and congressional Republicans already made deep cuts to health coverage and food assistance in their megabill enacted earlier this year. They could impose similarly harmful cuts to housing and homelessness assistance through the appropriations bill now under negotiation. It’s critical that no families lose assistance and communities have the resources to at least maintain current levels of assistance.
To make that happen, a final funding bill for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should:
- Help more than 170,000 formerly homeless people stay in their homes with access to services. HUD issued a funding notice for the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, the main homelessness solutions program, that would cap the percentage of funding that can be used to pair rental assistance with supportive services at 30 percent — compared to about 87 percent under current policy. That change alone would take housing assistance away from more than 170,000 formerly homeless people, HUD estimates.While HUD temporarily rescinded the notice, the department stated it will make “technical corrections” and reissue it. The funding notice includes other policy changes for the funding competition that are so drastically different from previous years that some communities could be left without any CoC funding in 2026 to connect unhoused people with housing.But the timing of the notice alone will cause chaos. Some communities are facing delays in their 2026 funding because HUD issued the new funding notice months later than the usual grantmaking timeline. CoC-funded projects are on a variety of funding timelines, so projects that are expecting money in January will receive nothing. The longer HUD takes to reissue a notice and complete the grantmaking process, the longer and more extensive the gaps in funding for housing and services for formerly and currently homeless people. Many communities do not have resources to fund these services in the interim, forcing them to scale back or end housing assistance and services, which will leave many people experiencing homelessness once again.Congress needs to ensure that communities have the funding they need. Congress can — and should — direct HUD in the final funding bill to renew existing grants for 2026 (which would complete the two-year grants that first provided funding in 2025). This would keep people stably housed, and prevent funding disruptions for communities across the country, all without any increase in funding.
- Maintain assistance for the more than 50,000 households that use the successful Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) program to pay the rent each month. The EHV program has provided life-saving assistance to households at risk of or experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and trafficking, but its funding is expected to run out in 2026. While both the House and Senate include some helpful language in their HUD funding bills, neither proposal would fully address the funding cliff. A final bill should provide additional funding to ensure these households don’t lose assistance and the stability they’ve achieved.
- Sufficiently fund the Housing Choice Voucher program, the country’s largest federal rental assistance program. Neither the House or Senate annual funding bills for HUD include enough funding to keep pace with inflation and maintain existing levels of assistance in the voucher program. Without adequate funding, many agencies would have to stop issuing vouchers to new families as a way to control costs, leading to fewer people getting the help they need. This has already happened to many agencies this year, so HUD and housing agencies have nearly depleted existing emergency resources.We estimate that, under the House bill, about 411,000 fewer people could receive assistance, and about 243,000 fewer people would receive assistance under the Senate bill. Housing Choice Vouchers are a critical tool for helping people with low incomes afford housing, including people experiencing homelessness. It’s particularly important to ensure the voucher program has robust funding given the other threats to assistance discussed above.
Taken together, these cuts would further limit who receives housing assistance, leaving up to 600,000 more people without an affordable, stable home in the coming year. Rental assistance is a critical, evidence-based solution to reducing and preventing homelessness, but already eligible households can’t access it due to chronic underfunding. More people than ever are being forced into homelessness or are spending more than half their income on rent. Taking the steps outlined above could keep these problems from getting worse.
Cuts to rental assistance, on the other hand, will leave more people waiting for help, especially because the deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in the Republican megabill passed in July will make housing even less affordable for millions of families. Both of these programs support housing stability by covering other basic expenses, allowing families more room in their budgets for rent. Moreover, access to health supports is a critical component of the highly effective strategies that pair rental assistance with personalized health and social services to help unhoused or formerly unhoused people — the very supports the Administration is also attempting to drastically scale back.
More people than ever are being forced into homelessness or are spending more than half their income on rent.A final funding bill for 2026 must also protect against further partisan use of rescission authority and illegal withholding of funds by including language that ensures appropriated funding reaches the communities Congress intends, and that agencies have sufficient staff to manage these programs. Such guardrails along with the provisions described above would immediately benefit people across the country and are a necessary step for making housing and other basic needs more affordable.
Looking forward, Congress should do more to address housing affordability and homelessness. Housing costs are typically the single biggest part of a household’s budget, especially for people with low and moderate incomes. With record numbers of people being forced into homelessness and more than 24 million renters spending more than half of their incomes on rent, expanding rental assistance, in addition to increasing supportive services and the supply of affordable housing, are needed to make progress.
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The Words We Use to Describe Homelessness Will Get People Killed
A huge swath of the political and media spectrum sees a person living on the street as either an aesthetic nuisance or criminal-in-waiting. We should see them for who they are: a person suffering and vulnerable, deserving of our empathy.
Dec 01, 2025
Last month, Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade said of people living with mental illness on our streets: “Involuntary lethal injection… Just kill ’em.” He apologized—after the clip ricocheted across the internet—but the words were said, on air, to millions.
I run a nonprofit that directly serves the homeless. We meet people where they are—under overpasses, on subways, in shelters and supportive housing. I see, daily, how language like “vagrant,” or “zombie” strips people of their personhood. It lowers the public’s guard against cruelty and raises the political ceiling for punitive policies. We cannot afford to pretend that words don’t matter.
“Vagrancy,” once a legal catch‑all used to police and punish poor and Black Americans, is being rehabilitated in public discourse; historians have warned what that signals. And major tabloids routinely label our neighbors “vagrants” in crime headlines, blending poverty status with criminal identity in ways that echo the past.
Even federal policy is now framed around “fighting vagrancy.” That phrase isn’t from a century‑old placard; it’s the heading and premise of a July 2025 executive order, which opens by declaring “endemic vagrancy” a public menace and directs federal agencies to prioritize encampment removals and civil commitment.
The best research shows people experiencing homelessness are far more often victims of violence than perpetrators.
A huge swath of the political and media spectrum sees a person living on the street as either an aesthetic nuisance or criminal-in-waiting. To them, a person living on the street is barely a person at all but rather an indication of broader disorder that must be swept away or removed. But where should they be removed to? What should happen to them when they get there? Those questions are unimportant to certain portions of the media and political ecosystem.
The Supreme Court’s Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling in 2024 cleared the way for cities to punish sleeping outside even when shelter is unavailable. Some jurisdictions have read that as a green light for broader crackdowns rather than investments in housing and health care—turning survival behaviors into ticketable or jailable offenses. The July executive order doubled down, instructing federal agencies to preference grants for jurisdictions that enforce bans on “urban camping and loitering” and to support encampment removals with federal dollars. Words like “vagrancy” aren’t just stigmatizing; they now allocate money and power.
This year we saw what happens when the politics of sweeps outrun basic safety. In January, Cornelius Taylor was killed by a bulldozer during an encampment clearance in Atlanta—first chalked up to overdose, later shown by autopsy to be blunt‑force trauma. And in my home city of New York, Debrina Kawam was fatally set on fire by a stranger while she was sleeping in a subway car. Vocabulary that treats people as nuisances rather than neighbors makes such tragedies more likely.
I know public disorder is real. But I also know—by data and by name—that most of the people you step past on your commute are surviving traumas you don’t see.
The best research shows people experiencing homelessness are far more often victims of violence than perpetrators. In California’s landmark CASPEH study, 38% of participants experienced violence during their current episode of homelessness, and nearly three quarters reported violence at some point in their lives. Mortality data tell the same story of precarity. In Los Angeles County alone, 2,508 people experiencing homelessness died in 2023—an average of nearly seven people every day. The rate remains multiple times higher than that of the general population.
As a sector, we’ll keep doing our part: street outreach, housing navigation, medical and behavioral health care, and prevention. But leaders in government and media must stop normalizing language that primes the public for harm. Phrases like “person without housing” or “person who is homeless” more accurately reflect that homelessness is a temporary status, not an identity or permanent state of being. And in most cases, we can refer to our neighbors in media stories or political policy without any reference to their housing status.
I know public disorder is real. But I also know—by data and by name—that most of the people you step past on your commute are surviving traumas you don’t see. They are sons, daughters, parents, veterans, and caregivers. Some are literally recovering from yesterday’s assault. They are not “vermin.” They are not “zombies.”
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