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A new lawsuit alleges the Trump administration's overhaul of homelessness spending is unlawful. The Federal Housing Agency wants to dramatically cut back on long-term housing and impose new conditions on who can get the money. NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports the sudden shift has sparked fears that more than 100,000 people could be pushed back onto the streets.
JENNIFER LUDDEN, BYLINE: The changes were announced this month with little notice and only weeks before local homeless service providers must start applying for the nearly $4 billion.
PAM JOHNSON: Our agencies are just scrambling right now to try to respond.
LUDDEN: Pam Johnson is with the Minnesota Community Action Partnership, whose members provide housing and other services for homeless people.
JOHNSON: It also just reverses 40 years of bipartisan work on proven solutions to homelessness. So it's really - it's kind of shocking.
LUDDEN: For decades, U.S. policy favored permanent housing with optional treatment for addiction or mental illness. The strategy has a long track record of keeping people off the streets, but many conservatives argue it's failed to stop record rates of homelessness. Housing and urban development secretary Scott Turner wants a major shift to transitional housing that mandates treatment and work. Here he is on Fox Business Network.
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SCOTT TURNER: What is the root cause of homelessness? - mental illness, drug addiction, drug abuse. During the Biden administration, it was just warehousing. It was a homeless industrial complex - basically a slush fund...
LUDDEN: Turner and others who support the changes say the goal is to push people towards self-sufficiency. Devon Kurtz is with the conservative think tank Cicero Institute.
DEVON KURTZ: Ideally, we get a certain portion of the population that I would say is overhoused, that actually should be moving on to more levels of independence but wouldn't because why would you leave? Hopefully we're able to free up units by people exiting the system entirely.
LUDDEN: HUD also wants to deny funding if local groups don't comply with the Trump administration's agenda on things like DEI, the restriction of transgender rights and immigration enforcement. The lawsuit by 20 mostly Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia says such conditions are unconstitutional. It says Congress directs homelessness spending, and it's mandated that it be based solely on need and for evidence-based solutions. That echoes the concerns of people like Julie Embree, who heads the Toledo Lucas County Homelessness Board in Ohio. She says mental health and substance abuse are not the main factors there.
JULIE EMBREE: It's poverty - poverty, low income and significant lack of affordable housing.
LUDDEN: What's more, many people with disabilities are not able to work full time, she says. Embree agrees it's good to save money, but pushing people back into homelessness, where they're more likely to land in jail, the courts or a hospital, is not cost-effective.
EMBREE: One emergency room visit is just as expensive as a month of sustaining this program. And so all we're doing is we're going to shift the costs to other systems that are already overburdened.
LUDDEN: In Los Angeles, Stephanie Klasky-Gamer with LA Family Housing says more short-term housing would be great, but not at the expense of long-term housing. And she says the idea that programs can simply switch from one to the other is not only unrealistic, it's illegal.
STEPHANIE KLASKY-GAMER: You cannot take a building that has a 75-year deed restriction and just - ding - call it interim housing. It can't be.
LUDDEN: In addition to the legal challenge, members of Congress from both parties have also questioned HUD's sudden shift on homelessness. Advocates hope that, at the least, they can have more time to prepare for such a massive overhaul.
Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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