Simple math: housing program cuts=more homlessness

Social justice news
February 2007

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Simple math: housing program cuts=more homlessness
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Simple math:
housing program cuts=more homlessness
Cuts in federal low-income housing programs sponsored by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) are undermining local plans to fight homelessness, which affects approximately 3 million Americans (including 1 million children and 150,000 to 200,000 chronically homeless adults with disabilities) each year.

More than 200 communities have begun to develop such plans and many are already implementing them - largely at the urging of the Bush Administration, which has set a goal of ending chronic homelessness and reducing other types of homelessness and promised new federal resources to help meet these goals.

But, according to a study from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities , the Administration and Congress have cut funding for HUD programs. These cuts have weakened key programs on which local homelessness plans rely. The large cuts also have more than offset a modest increase in funding for the McKinney-Vento homeless assistance programs, which have grown by $70 million since 2002.

In spite of their importance to plans to end homelessness, mainstream low-income housing assistance programs have fared poorly in the federal budget in recent years. Since the reemergence of federal budget deficits in 2003, the Administration and Congress have reduced funding for a number of domestic programs, including most low-income housing assistance programs. By 2006, funding for HUD programs had declined by $3.3 billion (or 8 percent) in comparison to 2004, once adjustments for inflation are made. For 2007, the Administration has proposed further cutbacks of $1.3 billion, and, while Congress has not yet made its final appropriations decisions, most programs will likely be funded at roughly the same nominal level as in 2006—and therefore below 2006 levels once inflation is taken into account.

These cutbacks have affected nearly every low-income housing assistance program important to state and local plans to end homelessness. Community Development Block Grants, HOME, and public housing have been hit the hardest, with their funding declining by 20 percent, 16 percent, and 11 percent, respectively, from 2004 to 2006. And the Housing Choice Voucher Program and most other HUD programs have suffered losses as well.

The result has been a noticeable reduction in housing assistance resources available to local communities, including the loss of more than 150,000 housing vouchers since 2004. These losses are already undermining communities’ ability to meet their goals to put an end to homelessness in America.

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