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co-founder of Community

Housing Innovations, one of

the largest homeless service

providers in the New York

City area.

Service providers that

require people to meet work

or sobriety requirements in

order to receive housing

have seen lower levels of

funding.

In that sense, the alloca-

tion of money to homeless-

ness service providers is “a

continuation of Obama’s

policies,” Roberts said.

But experts on home-

lessness say the amount

spent on direct services is

only a part of the picture.

“Homelessness policy is

a relatively small subset of

overall HUD policy,” said

Paul Webster, vice president

of Solutions for Change, a

Southern California-based

nonprofit that fights family

homelessness.

In its housing assistance

programs, experts say, the

Trump administration has

lagged behind at a time

when the need has been

rising.

“You have to think about

homelessness as a symptom

of not having enough hous-

ing for folks,” said Mary K.

Cunningham of the Wash-

ington-based Urban Insti-

tute.

Every year since Trump

took office, his adminis-

tration has proposed “dra-

conian cuts” to HUD’s

budget, UC Berkeley’s Reid

said. “Each time the Trump

administration has pro-

posed the housing budget,

the secretary is proposing

cuts to housing assistance

when in fact we need signifi-

cant investments in housing

assistance,” she said.

In the 2018 budget pro-

posal, the administration

proposed cutting funds for

public housing by $1.8 billion

— almost 29% compared

with 2017 funding. That

budget also proposed large

rent increases for the low-

est-income households in

public housing.

The 2019 budget proposal

recommended the largest

cutbacks on federal housing

aid since 1937. The adminis-

tration’s proposal would

have eliminated Housing

Choice vouchers — which

assist low-income house-

holds in paying for apart-

ments — for roughly 200,

low-income households.

The proposed budget

also called for rent increases

on low-income families

WASHINGTON — As

homelessness has worsened

in many American cities,

including Los Angeles, the

Trump administration has

largely neglected the issue,

proposing few new initia-

tives and pushing cuts to

housing programs that, if

adopted, would probably

make the crisis worse, ac-

cording to analysts.

In budget proposals, the

administration has repeat-

edly but unsuccessfully

tried to take money from the

Department of Housing and

Urban Development — cuts

that could cause homeless-

ness to worsen significantly

if they were ever put into

effect, experts say. In addi-

tion, they said, by trying to

walk back Obama-era poli-

cies designed to give the

most vulnerable groups

access to shelter and hous-

ing, administration policies

could increase their chances

of homelessness.

The administration has

“continually signaled its

lack of interest in address-

ing housing and homeless

issues,” said Carolina Reid

of UC Berkeley’s depart-

ment of city and regional

planning.

A HUD spokesperson

said in a statement that the

department is “making

significant progress to

reduce homelessness in this

country.”

“As HUD continues to

invest record funding, we

recognize that money alone

won’t end homelessness,”

the spokesperson said,

speaking on condition of not

being identified by name,

under administration pol-

icy. “State and local govern-

ments across the country

are increasingly realizing

that ending homelessness

requires a deep commit-

ment to those individuals

and families living in our

shelters and on our streets.”

Defenders of the admin-

istration note that the

amount of money going to

state and local service pro-

viders to care for homeless

people has not significantly

changed under President

Trump and his Housing

secretary, Ben Carson.

The administration’s

funding of the so-called

Continuum of Care pro-

gram shows “almost com-

plete continuity with the

Obama administration,”

said Stephen Eide, a re-

searcher at the Manhattan

Institute, a conservative

think tank.

For its 2020 budget, the

administration proposed

spending $2.6 billion on

homeless services — a 9%

increase over the figure

requested in 2019.

Both administrations

have embraced a “housing

first” philosophy, meaning

they have allocated signifi-

cant funds to service pro-

viders that aim to move

homeless people into hous-

ing, then provide further

services and support, ac-

cording to Alec Roberts,

executive director and

receiving rental assistance

from HUD and suggested

slashing funding for public

housing repairs by $3 billion

— 47%, compared with 2017.

Congress hasn’t ac-

cepted any of those drastic

cuts, but every Trump

budget proposal is “a

threat,” Cunningham said.

The administration’s

2020 budget proposal out-

lines similar cuts.

It would eliminate mon-

ey for 140,000 housing vouch-

ers that help low-income

households afford places to

live. It would also remove

$4.6 billion in funding for

public housing — more than

a 60% decrease from the 2019

level.

Under Obama, HUD

secretaries Shaun Donovan

and Julián Castro funded

research to figure out best

practices to prevent home-

lessness. Department offi-

cials also looked for new

solutions to the problem of

obsolescence — the number

of public housing units that

need to be updated every

year in order to remain

livable.

The current adminis-

tration has shown little

interest in such policy inno-

vation.

Instead, the adminis-

tration has proposed efforts

to restrict who can receive

aid, moves that could esca-

late the homelessness crisis,

experts on the problem said.

Reid and other experts

pointed to two Trump ad-

ministration proposals that

increased the likelihood

that members of vulnerable

groups will either lose their

housing or not be able to get

out of homelessness.

Carson has proposed a

rule that would make house-

holds that include both U.S.

citizens and noncitizens

ineligible to receive housing

vouchers. Noncitizens

haven’t been eligible to

receive these benefits, but

citizens living with them

had under the Obama ad-

ministration, with a few

exceptions.

HUD is currently review-

ing the roughly 30,000 com-

ments that the department

received about the propos-

al.

In 2014, about 8 million

citizens lived in such mixed-

status households. If the

administration moves

ahead with its plan, many of

those people would face the

choice of no longer living

with their noncitizen family

members or trying to afford

housing without federal

assistance.

When HUD analyzed the

likely effect of this change,

officials concluded that it

could lead to evictions of as

many as 25,000 families,

comprising 108,000 people,

from housing units.

Carson justified this

proposal in March, saying in

a statement that the move

would free resources for

legal residents.

“Given the overwhelm-

ing demand for our pro-

grams, fairness requires

that we devote ourselves to

legal residents who have

been waiting, some for many

years, for access to afford-

able housing,” he said.

The administration has

also increased homeless-

ness in ways that are harder

to quantify, Reid said.

The president’s rhetoric

about immigrants and

foreign countries probably

deters immigrants from

seeking housing assistance,

even if they’re in the country

legally and eligible for gov-

ernment aid, she said.

“Immigrants are much

more likely to resist going to

find services,” Reid said. “If

they are evicted, they’re not

willing to go to the court or

legal aid agency or to get

help.”

They’re not the only

group that’s affected by the

administration’s budget

plans. In May, HUD pro-

posed weakening the Equal

Access to Housing rule —

which guarantees that

LGBTQ individuals will

have access to homeless

shelters. If the proposal is

adopted, shelters would

have permission to consider

factors including “privacy,

safety, practical concerns,

religious beliefs” and would

be allowed to turn LGBTQ

individuals away.

That announcement

came a day after Carson

told the House Committee

on Financial Services that

he didn’t plan to change the

Obama-era rule.

Advocates for homeless

people say the biggest step

the administration could

take to ease the crisis would

be to fund efforts to make

housing more affordable,

especially by expanding the

rental voucher program.

“Providing new housing

vouchers is the single most

effective thing the federal

government could do to

reduce homelessness,” said

Will Fischer, a senior policy

analyst at the Center on

Budget and Policy Pri-

orities. “The fact that

they’re not proposing or

moving towards any effort

to address those needs

explains why homelessness

has been allowed to in-

crease.”

The research is clear,

Cunningham said: Housing

vouchers have been shown

to reduce homelessness. If

an administration ex-

panded those programs,

homelessness would prob-

ably decline.

“This is a totally solvable

problem,” she said. “What

we have is a problem of

political will.”

BACK STORY

THE TRUMPadministration has repeatedly but unsuccessfully tried to take money away from the Depart-

ment of Housing and Urban Development — cuts that would worsen the homeless crisis, experts say.

Genaro MolinaLos Angeles Times

Advocates for homeless

decry federal inaction

Administration has weakened programs, targeted funding

By Caroline S.

Engelmayer

DEFENDERSnote that HUD funding under Secre-

tary Ben Carson has remained relatively constant.

Barbara Haddock TaylorBaltimore Sun