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Posted on 05/06/2025 6:03:12 PM PDT by Angelino97
On Friday President Trump released a budget blueprint for the next fiscal year that would take a chainsaw to social, environmental and education programs. Some of the sharpest cuts are directed at housing programs that are meant to serve the poor, housing insecure and unhoused.
In California, millions are served by these funds and state and local governments depend on them to operate affordable housing, rental assistance, homeless service, planning and legal programs.
In a letter to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, the president’s budget director, Russel Vought, laid out $163 billion in annual spending cuts coupled with “unprecedented increases” in military and border security spending. The cuts, Vought wrote, are directed at areas of spending that the administration found to be “contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.”
That includes $33.5 billion in proposed cuts to the Housing and Urban Development department, a 44% reduction from current levels.
Presidential budget requests rarely reflect what Congress ultimately passes into law but are instead often viewed as something between an opening negotiating bid and a political vision board.
Even so, the budget document makes for quite a vision — one that, if realized, would upend decades of federal housing policy and affect millions of lives.
The sheer breadth of the cuts provides an odd kind of solace to some affordable housing advocates.
“By following through on such a huge level with so many proposals that are going to gut assistance to low-income people across the country, including his own party’s states, he’s putting his own members of Congress in a very difficult place,” said Matt Schwartz, president of the California Housing Partnership, a nonprofit that advocates for more affordable housing. “The level of carnage that would be involved in doing these things is probably going to send some Republican senators running for the exits.”
A handful of powerful GOP senators have, indeed, already pushed back on the president’s proposal, though much of their ire was directed at what they saw as a lack of sufficient military spending.
The largest single cut in federal housing policy would target the Housing Choice Voucher program. Better known as Section 8, it’s currently administered by the federal government and helps low-income tenants with their rental payments. The White House is proposing shifting responsibility for the administration of that program, which it calls “dysfunctional,” to states, while cutting its funding in half.
It also proposes a two-year limit on how long a single person can receive help. That change is “completely out of touch with what people are facing in the housing market,” said Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. With soaring rents outpacing people’s incomes, low-income tenants aren’t going to be able to magically earn enough money to start paying rent in two years, he said.
Additional cuts to four other housing voucher programs are meant to save $27 billion annually.
“You’d be looking at millions of people out on the street virtually overnight,” said Schwartz. “There’s no way states could maintain the same level of assistance.”
The administration proposes to save nearly $5 billion more by eliminating funds for local economic development grants, affordable housing developments and local initiatives to reduce regulatory barriers to new housing.
That latter program, a Biden-era initiative known as Pathways to Removing Obstacle Housing, was denounced in the administration’s budget write-up as a “woke” program that has pursued “radical racial, gender, and climate goals.”
The White House pointed specifically to a $6.7 million grant made to Los Angeles County to fund infrastructure planning, public transit-oriented housing and, as described in the county’s funding proposal, rezoning that would reverse the region’s “legacy of past systemic racism.”
* Radical reshuffle of homelessness policy
The budget would slash federal homelessness funding by $532 million, while also radically changing the way those funds are distributed. The Continuum of Care program – the main way the federal government distributes funds to fight homelessness – would effectively end. It would be replaced by an Emergency Solutions Grant program.
The continuum program funds long-term solutions to homelessness, including permanent supportive housing, which is housing that comes with case management, counseling and other services for people with disabilities, mental illnesses, addictions or other struggles that mean they require extra help. Emergency Solutions Grants, on the other hand, fund more short-term solutions, such as homeless shelters, or short-term rental assistance for people who don’t need extra services.
That shift in funding would mean thousands of people would lose their supportive housing and end up back on the street, said Visotzky from the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
“This would be a significant shift away from the solution to homelessness, which is housing, towards shelter,” he said. “This budget is going to take away all the pathways to get out of shelter and into housing.”
Homeless veterans fared better. The budget proposes a $1.1 billion increase “for the President’s commitment to ending veterans’ homelessness.” Those funds would go to Veterans Affairs for rental assistance, case management and support services.
The budget also calls for the elimination of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, an agency tasked with coordinating homeless policy at the federal level, which the administration had already gutted.
* End of “fair housing” enforcement as we know it
The White House also proposes zeroing out a grant program that funds nonprofit legal aid organizations that enforce national fair housing laws. According to the explanatory summary of the cuts published by the administration, these organizations advocate “against single family neighborhoods and promote radical equity policies.”
That characterization is strongly disputed by Caroline Peattie, executive director of the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California. Federally recognized nonprofit fair housing groups processed 74% of all fair housing complaints submitted across the country in 2023, according to data compiled by the National Fair Housing Alliance. The remainder go to federal and state housing regulators.
“A recent example: In 2022, Peattie’s organization received a complaint that a Nevada-based appraisal company had undervalued the home of a Black and Latino couple. The nonprofit investigated and submitted a complaint. The California Civil Rights Department reached a settlement with the appraisal company in mid-April.”
If all the cuts go into effect as proposed, Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California would lose roughly 75% of its funding, said Peattie.
“It’s just appalling,” she said. “When the fair housing organizations go away, then what?”
The across-the-board cuts come after months of legal battle between fair housing organizations and the administration. In February the Department of Government Efficiency, helmed by Elon Musk, abruptly terminated a key source of funding, authorized by congress in 2023, for dozens of private fair housing organizations, including Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California. The groups sued. With that lawsuit pending, funding for 2024 is “still in the ether,” said Peattie.
Last month, Congress passed a bill to keep government spending at current levels from the prior year, meaning that fiscal year 2025 spending is in a holding pattern for now.
“But as for fiscal year 2026, all bets are off,” said Peattie.
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These are ADDITIONAL programs to the regular "Section 8" housing. California has received special favor from taxpayers for years to prop up their bankrupt state government that has never seen a social handout program they didn't love and are willing to throw money at.
That a lot of bullshit spent trying to justify a rat slush fund.
“In California, millions are served by these funds....”
How many of the millions are illegals??
A look at the highest PUBLIC pensions of California's "public servants" is again in order.
State of California Pensions list -- highest firstThe State of California has been a corrupt system for years, with its super-majority Democrats ruling, and its major city and county budgets all deep in debt, while being unwilling to cut spending.
The State of California's $ 600 billion in debt rises and risesIt was hoped that a Californian Kamala Harris would write checks to cover the massive mismanagement.
She lost. The nation won.
The real value of anything is the amount of money someone is willing to pay for it.
They pulled this baloney on President Trump. They said he "overvalued" his assets.
The Nevada company made a guess that the the coloreds didn't like.
Years ago, we had a farm and were in a terrible drought. The county next to us had SIXTY DAYS of water left in their reservoir. That country was THIRTY PERCENT illegals. If there were no illegals, the Americans would have had at least THIRTY DAYS more of water.
Ca has encouraged non-Americans to suck dry all of the resources and steal all of the money and opportunities that Americans were entitled to.
The people ending up on the streets have determined their own future.
‘Millions out on the street virtually overnight’:
The problem already exists. Isn’t that a local problem? Why all the buck passing?
Most of these workers are funded by CA budget and not federal budget.
What is the salary of one Caroline Peattie?
They can never be honest. About anything.
Lest we forget - the entire state is a sanctuary for illegals. Imagine if 100% of those present illegally were deported - what kind of resources would become available.
“Millions out on the street virtually overnight”
In California, it’s more like: “Millions out on the street every night”
“The budget would slash federal homelessness funding by $532 million”
Oh, brother. California has spent $30 BILLION cumulatively on homeless and what do we have to show for it? More homeless than ever.
The numbers were analyzed this morning.
$7T spending this year.
60% of the $7T is mandatory, non discretionary. AKA Medicaid and Soc Sec. That is $4.2 leaving $2.8T discretionary. Oddly, $1.1T interest on the debt (the most mandatory of all) is not in the mandatory category, so it comes out of the $2.8T.
This leaves $1.7T. DoD is to be protected at about $900B.
This leaves $800B that is available to cut. The proposal is $150B is to come out of that. About 20%.
But some items have been designated protected. That is Dept of Veterans Affairs. Dept of Transportation. NASA. They won’t be cut.
This is why things like HUD and Dept of Interior will get slammed 30-40%.
Know the numbers or you don’t know anything.
Most US homeless are from California, New York or Washington state. So maybe those funds for California aren’t working?
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