They’ve been accused of ruining a lot lately—vaccines, the Constitution, birthright citizenship, immigration—but no one seems to be talking about how they’re ruining homelessness.
Once, experiencing homelessness was something that primarily happened in larger cities. It was, in a grim way, a “special” thing that only certain places saw at scale. But thanks to Them, it’s coming soon to a town near you. As resources to help people return to housing dry up, homelessness will spread to smaller and smaller communities.
Most recently, They announced a plan to cut the staff of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in half. In case you didn’t know, HUD is where most federal efforts to end homelessness in the U.S. are focused. And the office facing the deepest cuts—around 80%—is the Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD).
You might not guess it from the name, but CPD handles the Special Needs Assistance Programs, most of which are directly aimed at homelessness. They manage Emergency Solutions Grants that go to state and local governments, funding shelters and programs like Rapid Re-Housing (RRH), which helps people move from shelters or the streets into housing as quickly as possible.
CPD also oversees Disaster Recovery, but their largest program is the Continuum of Care (CoC) program. A CoC is a coalition of nonprofits and government agencies providing homeless services within a region—this could be a state, multiple counties, a county and its largest city, or just a large city on its own. These coalitions coordinate policies, manage Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS) to track and report on homelessness, and handle the big picture of how communities address housing needs. CoC funding supports permanent housing, coordinated entry programs (which streamline how people access housing services), and HMIS operations. The data collected feeds into the Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress.
In a normal year, HUD holds a competitive process to decide how to distribute grant money. Most of the funds go toward renewing existing grants, but there’s always some money for new programs. The competition heavily weighs the quality of a community’s HMIS data and how effectively they’re moving people into permanent housing. It’s a grueling process, but at the end, winners are announced, contracts are signed, and funds get to the people doing the work.
That’s in a normal year.
If you’ve been wondering when we were going to get to how They’re ruining homelessness—here it is. This year, HUD announced the winners of the competition, but the contracts are stuck in some kind of DOGE-y limbo (and yes, read that as “dodgy” because it absolutely is). Not only are contracts not being processed, but there’s also no guidance on when agencies can expect them. And if 80% of the staff handling these processes are laid off? Don’t expect that limbo to end anytime soon.
Now, if you live in places like San Francisco or Los Angeles, you might be tempted to think these programs aren’t working anyway. That would be an easy assumption to make—but it would be wrong.
Every year, homeless service providers in the U.S. house around half a million people. They get folks off the streets or out of shelters and into permanent housing—whether that’s through Housing Choice Vouchers, rental assistance, moving in with family or friends, or even homeownership. And here’s the thing: after two years, over 80% of those people haven’t returned to the homeless services system.
In Fiscal Year 2023, the nationwide homeless services system served about 1.2 million people experiencing homelessness. Just under half of them were housed that year. The reason it doesn’t look like we’re making progress? Because our housing system generates between half a million and 1.5 million newly homeless people every year—whether they’re experiencing homelessness for the first time or falling back into it after being housed.
The programs work. But the people in charge—the ones deciding what is and isn’t “government waste”—don’t think the folks making all of this happen are “efficient” enough.
Like I said, they’re ruining homelessness.
Pretty soon, all the good bridges will be taken, the parks will be full, and the best panhandling spots will be booked solid.
Where will all the homeless children sleep?
Where?!
