‘Millions out on the street virtually overnight’: How Trump’s budget proposal could affect California

A homeless encampment along the sidewalk on X Street under State Trail Photo by Fred Greaves For CalMatters On Friday the Trump administration issued a budget blueprint for the next fiscal year that would take a chainsaw to social environmental and coaching programs Several 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 organization planning and legal programs In a letter to the U S Senate Appropriations Committee the president s budget director Russel Vought laid out billion in annual spending cuts coupled with unprecedented increases in military and territory line defense spending The cuts Vought wrote are directed at areas of spending that the administration revealed to be contrary to the requirements of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher training committed to radical gender and conditions ideologies antithetical to the American way of life That includes billion in proposed cuts to the Housing and Urban Growth department a 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 approach and affect millions of lives The sheer breadth of the cuts provides an odd kind of solace to various affordable housing advocates By following through on such a huge level with so a multitude of 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 intricate place disclosed 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 apparently going to send particular 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 agenda would target the Housing Choice Voucher plan Better known as Section it s at present administered by the federal administration and helps low-income tenants with their rental payments The White House is proposing shifting responsibility for the administration of that project 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 fully out of touch with what people are facing in the housing realm reported Alex Visotzky senior California procedures 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 announced Additional cuts to four other housing voucher programs are meant to save billion annually You d be looking at millions of people out on the street virtually overnight commented Schwartz There s no way states could maintain the same level of assistance The administration proposes to save nearly billion more by eliminating funds for local economic enhancement grants affordable housing developments and local initiatives to reduce regulatory limitations to new housing That latter initiative a Biden-era initiative known as Pathways to Removing Obstacle Housing was denounced in the administration s budget write-up as a woke scheme that has pursued radical racial gender and weather goals The White House pointed specifically to a million grant made to Los Angeles County to fund infrastructure planning society 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 approach The budget would slash federal homelessness funding by million while also radically changing the way those funds are distributed The Continuum of Care undertaking the main way the federal leadership distributes funds to fight homelessness would effectively end It would be replaced by an Crisis Solutions Grant activity The continuum project funds long-term solutions to homelessness including permanent supportive housing which is housing that comes with event management counseling and other services for people with disabilities mental illnesses addictions or other struggles that mean they require extra help Crisis 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 stated Visotzky from the National Alliance to End Homelessness This would be a important shift away from the fix to homelessness which is housing towards shelter he reported 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 billion increase for the President s commitment to ending veterans homelessness Those funds would go to Veterans Affairs for rental assistance episode management and advocacy services The budget also calls for the elimination of the U S Interagency Council on Homelessness an agency tasked with coordinating homeless plan 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 activity 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 of all fair housing complaints submitted across the country in according to material compiled by the National Fair Housing Alliance The remainder go to federal and state housing regulators A newest example In Peattie s organization received a complaint that a Nevada-based appraisal company was systematically undervaluing homes owned by Black and Latino Californians The nonprofit investigated and submitted a complaint to the state 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 of its funding stated Peattie It s just appalling she disclosed 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 Administration Efficiency helmed by Elon Musk abruptly terminated a key source of congressionally authorized funding for dozens of private fair housing organizations including Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California The groups sued With that lawsuit pending the funds appropriated for fiscal year are still in the ether commented Peattie Last month Congress passed a bill to keep establishment spending at current levels from the prior year meaning that fiscal year spending is in a holding pattern for now But as for fiscal year all bets are off mentioned Peattie CalMatters is a masses interest journalism venture committed to explaining how California s state Capitol works and why it matters