While President Trump’s budget proposal seeks significant cuts in spending on homelessness programs, its larger impact would come from changes in how the money is spent.
With homelessness at record levels, the plan would increase money for emergency shelters but end aid for permanent supportive housing, the focus of a decades-long movement to serve society’s most vulnerable.
More than 300,000 people live in such housing, all chronically homeless and disabled. Many are veterans. Critics warn that the change would not only forestall the expansion of the permanent housing stock but force evictions of those it currently helps, who rely on the deep subsidies that the budget eliminates.
“This is counter to the stated goal of reducing street homelessness, because it’s putting people back on the streets,” said Barbara Poppe, a consultant to local governments who worked on homelessness issues in the Obama administration.
The Trump proposal would abolish two programs that finance long-term housing — the Continuum of Care Program and Housing Opportunities for Persons With AIDS — and move them into the Emergency Solutions Grant Program. That program finances short-term shelters and housing limited to two years.
The proposed cut of $532 million amounts to a reduction of about 12 percent in combined spending. But none of the remaining money can be spent on long-term housing, which supporters see as the most important safety net.
Permanent supportive housing emerged three decades ago as a solution to chronic homelessness, initially with bipartisan support. Under a philosophy called Housing First, it provides deeply subsidized housing and offers — but does not require clients to accept — services for addiction or mental illness.
Proponents say it saves lives by getting chronically homeless people off the streets, where they die at high rates. But in recent years, some conservatives have called the approach permissive and said it fails to address the underlying problems many homeless people face. Some blame it for recent surges in the unhoused population.
Many people come to permanent supportive housing after a decade or more on the streets. In limiting their housing aid to two years, the Trump plan does not address the question of what should happen after that.
