Among the many abrupt policy shifts the Trump regime has undertaken over the past 10 months, are changes it’s made to federal housing policy. Instead of funding Housing First programs, a proven method for moving people out of homelessness, the administration has instead opted for a punitive approach that prioritizes temporary or transitional housing — and a cut-off of funding that will place almost 200,000 people currently with housing at risk of being homeless again. A coalition of 20 states and Washington, D.C. filed a lawsuit on Nov. 25 to block these changes to the federal homeless program.
The number of Americans now experiencing homelessness is over 770,000, an 18 percent increase from 2024. The rise in homelessness is driven by many factors including a severe shortage of affordable housing and incomes that don’t keep pace with rising costs.
Between The Lines’ Melinda Tuhus spoke with Ann Oliva, the CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization whose mission is to end homelessness in America through public policy, research, communication and capacity building. Here she talks about the two approaches to ending homelessness and her organization’s opposition to Trump’s recently announced policy.
ANN OLIVA: The executive order that was released by the White House at the end of July, that sort of provided the roadmap for how the administration intends to change its policies related to homelessness. In particular, what that document did was to say to the field that the administration intended to deprioritize Housing First programs, which is an evidence-based approach to ending homelessness that prioritizes housing as the base by which people can receive services that they need to heal from trauma, address some of their underlying issues and that sort of thing.
The first item is the executive order increasing institutionalization, including forced institutionalization of people who are experiencing homelessness and might have mental health conditions. They also talk about camping bans and criminalization of people experiencing homelessness. And then the first time that we saw a notice of funding opportunity under the auspices of this new executive order was something called the Continuum of Care Builds Notice of Funding Opportunity or NOFO.
That NOFO included a number of criteria. It was the third time that it was issued. And this third one was issued at the beginning of September, with a very short turnaround. One week. It was for development of permanent supportive housing. And it included many of the things that the executive order laid out and that were laid out in other executive orders, specifically around what the administration considers DEI work—Diversity, Equity and Inclusion work. It had requirements around how communities have to work with law enforcement on immigration issues and a number of other things. That notice of funding opportunity has been halted by the courts because it is subject to a temporary restraining order until the merits of the case can be heard by the judge. And then on the first day back after the government shutdown, we saw the Continuum of Care NOFO, regular Continuum of Care NOFO be released.
That is for $3.9 billion. So overall, it is not a cut to the overall program, but what it does do is it caps permanent housing at 30 percent, a community’s total amount. So in practice, what that means is that because HUD, that program about 87 percent of the money in that program is used for permanent housing and it is now capped at 30 percent. There are a lot of permanent housing programs that will lose their funding over the course of 2026 if the NOFO is not stopped either through legislative means or through the courts. About 270,000 people are served at a given point in time in the COC program and about 170,000 will lose their permanent housing program.
MELINDA TUHUS: If it’s capped at 30 percent, what’s the 70 percent of the funding going to go to?
ANN OLIVA: I think that’s right. The administration is prioritizing these short-term interventions that for street outreach, have to work with local law enforcement and immigration services, which is really hard for street outreach workers to do because the street outreach worker usually tries to build trust with a person who’s living unsheltered. They would have to participate in encampment closures. So there are a number of changes even to the structure of those interventions. And I would dare to say it’s a reversal back to the 1980s and early 1990s before permanent housing became a priority for people experiencing homelessness.
