HUD secretary touts new policy that could lead to more homelessness

Despite Donald Trump’s campaign vows in 2024 that he would fix the housing crisis that’s affecting more than a million Americans across the country, the president’s administration has been doing seemingly all it can over the past year to cut off assistance to people without homes. 

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The New York Times reported on a policy announced this week by extremist-friendly Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, which will gut “Housing First” programs by diverting $1.2 billion dollars from programs that support long-term living arrangements for people without homes and route that money instead toward short-term housing programs that focus on addiction and mental health. 

The Times explained the dire picture that could play out as a result:

The plan, which seeks to promote “law and order,” is a scaled-back version of one the administration issued last fall. Congress and a federal court blocked that proposal after critics warned it could send as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people back to the streets. The admin istration’s revised plan is still a frontal assault on the longstanding model of homelessness aid known as Housing First. The move is likely to shift about $1.2 billion away from housing programs, with the risk of displacing current tenants. It constitutes the sharpest change in homelessness policy in a generation.

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In a press release announcing the policy, Turner said “the ‘housing first’ experiment failed Americans by warehousing the vulnerable without results,” and that the change, which threatens housing options for many Americans, will help promote “self-sufficiency.” This is the same illogic the administration is using to justify cuts to food aid, which have put millions of Americans at risk of going hungry.