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housing vouchers
Fears Grow Over Future of Social Infrastructure in a Second Trump Term
His strategy will shift from “death by a thousand cuts” to abolish, terminate, and destroy.
Mar 11, 2024
The U.S. safety net is not easily understood. Difficult to navigate, it sprawls across numerous federal agencies and departments. Dozens of programs, ranging from free school lunch to disability insurance to unemployment protection have different eligibility criteria, application procedures, and benefit levels. While critical for millions of Americans, recipients are under continuous scrutiny: regularly castigated, accused of laziness, irresponsible behavior, fraud, and, among other chilling characterizations, undeserving. Its fragmented nature and lack of powerful allies makes it difficult to protect and leaves many of its core programs vulnerable to attack and retrenchment.
For decades, Republicans have been intent on instilling more stringent eligibility requirements for safety net programs, reducing program funding, and in some cases eliminating programs and agencies entirely. When Donald Trump entered office in 2016, he sought to strangle the American safety net using a “death by a thousand cuts” strategy that relied heavily on the administrative rule-making process and the judicial system, hence moving policy decision-making away from Congress. Many of these efforts ultimately stalled or failed because of legal challenges and administrative missteps by Trump officials.
Conservatives learned from these failures, and have worked tirelessly over the past four years to craft a sweeping set of reforms that would enable Trump to wield authority far more easily, and be far more reaching, than during his first term. Trump, according to Kevin Roberts, President of the conservative Heritage Foundation, stumbled out of the gate after winning in 2016: “Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”
Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise 2025, rectifies this and lays the groundwork for how to pull this off. Biblically-based in Judeo-Christian traditions and service to God, it echoes the racial resentment and discriminatory effects of equity that Trump has stoked for the past eight years. A second Trump administration, run by well-vetted right-wing loyalists, will “identify and reverse all actions taken by the Biden administration to advance progressive ideology and further equity.” “Nothing”, they profess, “is more important than deconstructing the centralized administrative state”. But, as they well know, it will be at the expense of millions who rely on its support and services to live.
How might this unfold?
Despite the fiscal challenges that Social Security and Medicare face, Trump has promised changes, yet offers no concrete plans or proposals. But his GOP allies in Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson have proposed benefit reductions and other changes. During his time as chair of the Republican Study Committee, Johnson proposed several reforms that advocates warned were clearly “veiled attempts” to raise the retirement age and ultimately make benefits less generous.
Trump’s attack on the safety net, however, would target programs that do not receive the coverage or political support of Social Security and Medicare. As a guide for action, the Mandate outlines numerous consequential changes for programs related to food and nutrition, shelter, and education programs for poor and low-income children and families.
The repository for all means-tested programs from all agencies and departments slated for reduction or termination will be The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Programs like SNAP, school meals programs, and meals programs for the elderly will be moved out of the Department of Agriculture into HHS so as to remove any inkling of a “welfare-based” focus. Universal free school meals will be eliminated.
Along with the elimination of the Department of Education and Head Start and learning programs that target poor communities, all federal funding will be block-granted to states; an overt response to allowing states freedom to do as they see fit with no federal oversight. Existing research shows that over time, block-granting programs ultimately leads to funding reductions and diversions.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will be reinvented and existing work requirements will be strengthened to move people toward self-sufficiency. All fair housing regulations designed to further equity and reduce discrimination will be repealed.
Across all departments and programs, racial classifications and quotas will be eliminated.
What does this mean to the millions who rely on social infrastructure programs?
Turning power over to states will have disastrous consequences for low-income children and families. Thirteen red states have already refused federal money for summer meal programs for low-income and poor children, citing philosophical objections with welfare programs and lack of control over what families might purchase with the food-only benefit. At least 21 million children, living in families with annual incomes under $46,000 (for a family of 3), will not have access to a $40 per child monthly grocery benefit. The negative impacts on child health and development in the short-term, and the long-term implications of mired adult achievement and productivity because of poor nutrition in early childhood is, however, of little concern.
The elimination of Head Start will knowingly harm nearly 1 million low-income young children a year at a pivotal stage in their educational and social development: helping them build the skills they need to be successful in school and life while taking a comprehensive approach to meeting the needs of their families. The effects will be most consequential amongst Hispanic and African-American children, dual language learners, children who are homeless or in foster care, those who qualify for free lunch, and those whose mothers didn't graduate high school. Head Start children have a higher likelihood of graduating high school, attending college, and receiving a post-secondary degree, license, or certification as well as reduced teen pregnancy and criminal engagement and increased educational attainment among their children despite Mandate claims to the contrary.
Existing research shows that housing vouchers reduce homelessness, housing instability, and improves numerous outcomes for children and families. The proposed changes at HUD will make housing assistance more difficult for low-income individuals to access, which is difficult to comprehend given how challenging it is to access these programs already. Vouchers are critical to lift people out of poverty and reduce racial inequity. The access challenges will be most heavily concentrated among people with the lowest incomes and people of color as a result of decades of housing and employment discrimination.
At the heart of this attack on America is the resolve to ensure that all intents to promote equity and preserve the dignity, freedom and well-being of individuals are squelched, especially for those not white and who have, in any number of ways, been marginalized by societal and economic injustices. Humanity, protection of those less fortunate than the power elite, civility, and rights to basic needs does not fit with the plan laid out by right-wing zealots in the Mandate.
When Donald Trump assumed the presidency in 2017, it was unclear exactly how he would govern. Many conservatives, and even some liberals, thought the institution of the presidency would constrain him. In some ways, it did. But as his grip on the presidency loosened over the course of 2020 and into 2021, the guardrails that had worked to contain his most dangerous impulses similarly began to slip away.
Trump learned several lessons from his four years in the White House: to prize loyalty above competence or governing experience, and that divisive rhetoric focused on resentment, retribution, and retaliation motivates his base more than programmatic policy positions. His future actions are now easier to predict and will be far more dangerous. As one New York Times report noted, “Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.”
The war that Trump would wage on the safety net in a second term would unfortunately, be unsurprisingly cruel. In many ways, his assault on the welfare state would be a continuation of a fifty-year war that began in earnest when Ronald Reagan won the White House in 1980. It was then that the Heritage Foundation put together its original Mandate for Leadership to prepare for Reagan’s presidency, described as “a blueprint for grabbing the government by its frayed New Deal lapels and shaking out 48 years of liberal policy.” Reagan ushered in a new era of opposition to the social safety net, which has left the welfare state in a state of fragmentation, passive neglect, and perpetual inadequacy.
The GOP assault on the safety net has been a decades-long battle, and there is no indication that Trump will suddenly change the party’s positioning on social welfare programs. In fact, the available evidence indicates that if he wins a second term, his strategy will shift from “death by a thousand cuts” to abolish, terminate, and destroy.
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We Need a 21st Century Definition of Homelessness
Policy makers, elected officials, funders, and activists need to update that definition to represent the much larger number of people who are actually experiencing homelessness.
Nov 30, 2023
November is National Homelessness Awareness Month, and it has been over 14 years since the federal government last updated its definition of homelessness. It is time to change that to reflect how people experience homelessness today, and to secure more funding to end housing instability.
An individual is considered homeless if they lack a fixed, adequate nighttime residence (including those staying in a homeless shelter), lose their residence without another place to go, or are fleeing domestic violence.
Millions of people cycle in and out of homelessness each year. And that’s just when counting by the narrow federal definition. The actual number is likely far higher.
Counting temporary doubled-up housing situations as at-risk of homelessness makes less sense when individuals are experiencing literal homelessness every other night.
As a 2016 study highlighted, many people who lose their stable housing make the difficult decision to move into others’ homes. Examples of this include a parent and adult child living together, couchsurfing with friends, or two families living together. In 2019, 3.7 million people lived in households like this, most of whom are viewed by the government as at-risk of homelessness.
But staying temporarily with a friend or family member is not permanent stable housing. People living in doubled-up households represent a wide variety of situations, and those who need help to avoid losing what little stability they have shouldn’t be denied it because they don’t match a stereotypical view of being homeless.
There is precedent for this. Since 2009, unaccompanied youth between 18 and 25, as well as families with children, have been considered under a more extensive definition of homelessness by the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Youth and families with children are considered homeless if they have not lived independently in permanent housing for a long time, frequently move, and anticipate this will continue. The definition for these groups includes doubled-up households. In the 2022-2023 school year, 61% of homeless children in New York City were living in doubled-up households.
Many individuals older than 25 and without children meet this criteria. People who experience federally defined homelessness sometimes temporarily stay with friends or family. For many of them, however, these arrangements are usually not a long-term solution, and are not an indication that they don’t need services.
Another 2022 study shows even these short stays can threaten an individuals’ priority for homeless services, such as shelters and housing, and jeopardize their ability to permanently exit homelessness.
Denying access to assistance perpetuates racial disparities in homelessness services.
A 2013 report for HUD found that Black, Hispanic, Asian, Indigenous, and other non-white households were more likely to be doubled-up than white households. Doubled-up households were concentrated in cities and other urban areas across the United States. Latinx people experiencing homelessness are more likely to live in doubled-up housing conditions to avoid living in a shelter or on the street.
To be sure, those in the at-risk category are already eligible for homeless prevention services through HUD’s Emergency Solutions Grant such as permanent rental subsidies, eviction prevention, and rapid rehousing programs. Rapid rehousing programs offer short-term services like finding rental housing, covering move-in costs, rent, deposits, utilities, and negotiating with landlords.
Homelessness prevention, however, is a small piece of the overall federal response to homelessness, with the least amount of funding and the lowest priority. Counting temporary doubled-up housing situations as at-risk of homelessness makes less sense when individuals are experiencing literal homelessness every other night.
Permanent rental vouchers keep people housed. Yet families can spend up to six years on the waitlist for the Housing Choice Voucher, a permanent rental subsidy, especially if they are only at-risk of homelessness.
Policy makers, elected officials, funders, and activists need to update the definition of homelessness to represent the much larger number of people who are actually experiencing homelessness. It is vital to dedicate more resources to those who are staying in precarious housing situations that can leave them homeless on the streets or in shelters at any time.
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A Lack of Supply Isn’t Causing Our Housing Crisis
Millions of people simply do not make enough money to consistently afford market-rate housing.
Aug 13, 2023
A few weeks ago, I drove through my hometown of Indianapolis to a court session which had nearly 200 eviction cases set on the docket. On the way, I passed multiple construction projects, several of them building apartments or other housing.
Contrary to popular belief, all that construction won’t help the hundreds of families I saw facing eviction. Nor will it be of any benefit to almost any of the 13 million other households currently behind on their rent or mortgage or the 600,000 people who are homeless in this country.
You wouldn’t know that from listening to the Biden administration, state governors, and think tanks, all of whom trumpet the virtues of building more housing. The New York Times diagnoses homelessness as a simple “supply-and-demand problem.”
Schwartz and McClure put it plainly: “Nationally, there is no shortage of housing, and adding to the surplus won’t resolve the nation’s affordability problems.”
The Atlantic writes that “The Obvious Answer to Homelessness” is, you guessed it, building more housing. Earlier this summer, when tenants brought their concerns about high rents to the National Multifamily Housing Council, the largest corporate landlord lobby in the country, they too were told that their struggles to afford rising rents could be solved if we just build additional housing.
How did such a powerful consensuscome together? As the saying goes, follow the money. Government subsidies and tax breaks for housing construction makes real estate developers fabulously wealthy. Banks, realtors, and corporate builders prosper from new construction, too. These industries’ fingerprints are all over the reams of reports and articles claiming that we must build our way out of the housing crisis. As Politico reported in November, “Lobbyists are scrambling to get help from Washington to goose the housing market.”
Maybe we should listen instead to the housing experts whose bank accounts don’t get a boost every time a crane goes up. Take Alex Schwartz and Kirk McClure. Schwartz, a professor at the New School, literally wrote the book on U.S. housing, Housing Policy in the United States, now in its fourth edition from Routledge Press. McClureis professor emeritus in urban planning at the University of Kansas. Like Schwartz, he is a widely-published, highly-decorated expert on housing markets.
In a recentBarron’s article, Schwartz and McClure decided to look past the housing-supply hype and crunch the numbers. Those numbers show that 21st century housing construction has produced a surplus of 3.5 million units, including a surplus in virtually every metropolitan area. New York, for example, has a quarter-million more units than are needed to house its population.
Schwartz and McClure put it plainly: “Nationally, there is no shortage of housing, and adding to the surplus won’t resolve the nation’s affordability problems.”
Past the profit-focused cacophony insisting on building more housing, Schwartz’s and McClure’s warning is being repeated by others. Allan Mallach, a senior fellow at the Center for Community Progress and the National Housing Institute, concurred in large part with Schwartz and McClure in a Shelterforce article earlier this year. While Mallach does think building modestly-priced housing will help middle-income families, he rejected out of hand the notion that housing construction will solve the crisis experienced by the very low-income people who are homeless or housing insecure.
New construction’s impact is even more limited considering that the a great deal of new housing construction is luxury priced. The idea that production of higher-end housing expands the supply in a way that allows other housing to become affordable is known as “filtering.” But, among the several reasons this theory is unsupported by evidence is that it does not account for the millions of wealthy institutions and individuals keeping units vacant in lieu of renting them for lower prices. Empty condos in cities are sometimes known as “safe deposit boxes in the sky.” They are so plentiful that, in some U.S cities, there are more vacant units than there are homeless persons.
So, if a lack of supply is not the problem, what is causing our housing crisis? Schwartz, McClure, Mallach, and others offer the straightforward explanation that is also reported annually by the National Low-Income Housing Coalition’sOut of Reach reports, which is the same explanation our clients tell us time after time: Millions of people simply do not make enough money to consistently afford market-rate housing. We routinely represent people who fell behind on rent because it amounted to 80% and more of their entire incomes from low-wage work or disability checks. As the title of a 2019 Mallach article pointed out, “Rents Will Only Go So Low, No Matter How Much We Build.”
New construction won’t fix that problem. But other approaches will, including expanded and improved public housing and rent control. (The well-documented neglect of U.S. public housing maintenance and the enormous unmet demand for subsidized units make new public housing an exception to the rule that new construction won’t help those most in need.)
Schwartz, McClure, Mallach, and others call for universal housing vouchers, a fast, straightforward remedy for the shameful fact that 3 of every 4 eligible households are blocked from transformative housing subsidies simply because we don’t fund the program adequately. Universal vouchers, featured in President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign platform, should be an interim step on the path to social housing freed of the for-profit market. And voucher expansion must be accompanied by laws prohibiting landlords from discriminating against voucher holders.
There may be great value in boosting housing construction, including creating good-paying jobs and providing more options for middle-income households. But let’s stop pretending that it will solve the affordability crisis faced by our clients and millions of other low-income Americans.
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