It’s bad enough that the number of homeless people in the United States soared to the highest ever recorded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development over the past several years, driven largely by a national housing crisis and by what the homelessness researcher Dennis Culhane has described to me as the “migrant bump,” the increase in asylum seekers. Now, as part of broad proposed cuts to federal housing assistance, the Trump administration is poised to reduce funding for HUD’s housing program for the homeless by more than half, putting at risk tens of thousands of people who have escaped homelessness and stifling the creation of more housing for those still on our streets and in our shelters.
The modern manifestation of homelessness began in the 1970s, largely because of a national push to move people out of psychiatric hospitals without the community support services they needed. Nearly five decades into the response, researchers and policymakers in both Democratic and Republican administrations have consistently found that offering homeless people a place to live, coupled with support services for those who need them, is a highly effective way of getting and keeping them off the streets. This intervention, known as permanent supportive housing, is precisely what HUD is targeting for a $2 billion cut. The administration’s plan would be a draconian and nonsensical rollback of the very solution that has ended homelessness for people in every state in our country, and would threaten the tenancies of many more.
The United States should be going all in on what works. Sadly, even before the new administration, there have never been enough resources for either housing or services to end homelessness.
That insufficiency created a rift. For the first three decades of the response to homelessness, a “services first” approach prioritized treatment as the first, and potentially the only, intervention. People’s lives improved, but with little to no emphasis on housing, they were too often left languishing in shelters or shuffling from one program to another. They were endlessly serviced, but their homelessness never ended.
In the early 2000s, the George W. Bush administration adopted a new approach called Housing First and changed the paradigm. It called for placing people in housing as quickly as possible, recognizing that housing itself has a therapeutic impact on people’s lives. Then offer services — whether for mental health, employment, addiction or physical health — to support their lives and promote stable, secure tenancies.
I saw the benefits of this paradigm shift firsthand. When I went to Washington to head up the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness more than two decades ago, HUD had been spending a vast majority of its homeless resources on services, which it had no ability to monitor or evaluate, and only a small fraction on housing. With the support of agency leaders, including HUD Secretaries Mel Martinez and Shaun Donovan, successive administrations increased the share of HUD funds that went toward housing to over 60 percent by 2010. Through several initiatives, we learned that when government prioritizes the creation of housing with services, it works: By 2009, chronic homelessness fell by more than a third, and by 2023, homelessness among veterans was found to have decreased by more than 50 percent.
Today, through that bipartisan approach, the amount of resources focused on housing creation has increased steadily, to above 80 percent of HUD’s homelessness budget. That makes sense for a housing department!
Services never stopped being a vital part of reducing homelessness; other federal agencies stepped up to provide them. The expansion of Medicaid funding in the early 2000s made HUD’s pivot to focusing on providing housing over services more viable. For the past two decades, those Medicaid dollars have aided the transition of disabled and vulnerable homeless people into permanent housing and supported their tenancies.
To be sure, there still is a deficiency on both fronts. But the funding proposals currently being forwarded by HUD will roll the clock back to a response that was well meaning but that left people in the long misery of homelessness. The old services-first approach undermines the model we now know works — housing as the appropriate nexus point for the delivery of services. Housing without services sets vulnerable people up for failure. Services without housing leaves people homeless on the streets and in shelters.
In July, President Trump issued an executive order, Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets, that recognized the importance of social support programs for homeless people and increased accountability for their administration. He called on the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to ensure reductions in homelessness by prioritizing mental health and substance abuse services, specifically from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
Herein lies the irony. In a plotline worthy of an O. Henry short story, the administration is proposing new support services that would support homeless people in housing while planning a severe cutback in resources that would deprive them of that housing. Unfortunately, that contradictory combination may engage homeless people further, but leave them without a place to live. According to reporting from Politico, HUD’s internal documentation estimates that the contemplated cuts could cause more than 170,000 formerly homeless people to lose their housing.
That outcome is unacceptable. The administration has the responsibility to ensure housing for all its citizens and the services that will contribute to their stability and security.
The Services First and Housing First proponents are not without responsibility in resolving this situation. The sooner they advance beyond their respective dogmas and work together to provide what they can jointly offer, the sooner their collective voice will influence this administration’s policies on behalf of our poorest neighbors.
Philip Mangano is the president and chief executive of the American Round Table to Abolish Homelessness.
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