(Illustration by Katelyn Perry / Unsplash+)
This story was co-published in collaboration with Shelterforce, the only independent, non-academic publication covering the worlds of affordable housing, community development and housing justice.
As of March 11, the Trump administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development has not sent award letters for any of the $3.6 billion in Continuum of Care homelessness support grants for fiscal year 2024 that were issued under the Biden administration. That’s despite a statutory obligation to issue these funds as well as multiple federal courts ordering the Trump administration to reverse its federal grant freeze.
Now, Next City and Shelterforce have learned that at least one program in Denver already plans to end rent payments on permanent supportive housing units, effective April 1. Family Tree issued a letter to 34 residents of permanent supportive housing — meant for chronically homeless people with disabling conditions — saying the nonprofit will not pay rent on those units in April, meaning residents will have to either pull together the money themselves or face eviction. The nonprofit cited the lack of a HUD award letter and its own limited reserves.
In a March 10 email to Next City/Shelterforce, HUD said that the Continuum of Care program would continue and that the agency would be reaching out to grantees this week. Many service providers who receive HUD grants for homelessness programs, including permanent supportive housing, already operate on thin margins, relying on reserves or debt to carry them through the first few months of their contract period until HUD money comes through. While they await clarity or grant award letters from HUD, smaller operators can’t afford to risk spending funds that won’t be reimbursed.]
It’s not the only attack on once-reliable HUD funding. The Trump administration has canceled technical assistance grants and Fair Housing grants, fired probationary employees and plans to reduce the department’s workforce by half, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post. The administration has floated closing dozens of HUD field offices across the country.
We spoke to impacted people experiencing homelessness and to service providers to learn more about how these decisions are playing out on the ground. Their accounts, edited lightly for clarity and length, appear below.
Sheila, a permanent supportive housing resident
Sheila, a 54-year-old disabled Denver resident, entered homelessness five years ago after leaving a decades-long abusive marriage. Sheila, who asked that her last name not be published to protect her privacy, has multiple disabilities that leave her unable to work and make it difficult to find a suitable apartment. For the past year, she’s lived in private apartments subsidized by permanent supportive housing provider Family Tree.
But on Feb. 26, Family Tree sent a letter to Sheila and more than 30 other clients saying it can’t continue paying rent on their apartments after March. That’s because Family Tree hasn’t yet received a grant award letter from HUD for its $956,000 permanent supportive housing contract, which was set to renew on Feb. 1. Without HUD confirming that Family Tree will be reimbursed for the $72,000 monthly cost of the program, Sheila and other clients will either have to find other housing or face eviction for nonpayment.
Family Tree CEO Paolo Diaz tells Next City/Shelterforce that he is reaching out to local elected officials about tapping state and city funds to carry the program forward. He asks the public to donate to help keep Family Tree’s clients housed. Meanwhile, Sheila does not know where she will live next month.
Sheila: I’m dealing with a whole lot of fair housing issues because I have disabilities that you cannot see. I look like a whole hearty girl, like I’m just fine. I can no longer write with my hands without great pain because of nerve damage. My spinal cord is compressed, and then I have severe chemical sensitivities. I carry an EpiPen everywhere I go.
I signed on because the housing specialist said, as long as you qualify, it’s permanent. She’s like, “forever.” And then she goes, “I love saying that.” I had no idea that this could happen.
[My current apartment] has turned out to be really good for my health. This place has split unit heat and air, which means it doesn’t share ventilation with anybody else. It has solid wood floors. It has its own washer and dryer, and it has doors directly to the outside, which are my disability needs. Nobody’s spraying air fresheners or smoking or whatever. I’m sleeping much better here. I’m breathing much better here. My heart rate is more stable here — and I probably will have to move at the end of this month.
It is very hard in the first place to get out of homelessness, whatever reason you’re in it. My wallet was stolen when I first got to Denver [2.5 years ago], which included — because I was living in my vehicle — my license and my Social Security card. It took me up to just a few weeks ago to get my Colorado license.
It’s really stressful to think of how difficult it was to get housed in the first place with the level of staffing that there currently was, and to think that HUD workforce would be reduced and that Fair Housing oversight would be reduced or eliminated, and the Social Security Administration being reduced, and the programs that I rely on for living.
People don’t end up homeless because they have tons of support. I have good, solid friends and a lot of emotional and spiritual support. But I don’t have wealthy friends.
It was a long haul to get housed, and I was in the parking program for a year and a half and living in vehicles for three and a half years. Now, the parking program has ended because they lost funding from the city of Denver. (Note: The Colorado Safe Parking Initiative began in 2020 and allowed people living in their vehicles to park at 15 parking lots across the Denver metro area, with the city providing sanitation and services. The city council cut funding in 2024, leading to the program’s closure.)
It is already so complicated out here for people with disabilities. I think that there’s definitely a human tendency to look at people who appear whole and go, I don’t understand why they’re not working. I would love to be able to support myself and not depend on SSI.
I’m a 54-year-old woman with disabilities that irritate me plenty. So you know, I do understand people not getting it and being irritated themselves but there’s nothing that I can do.
However, if there’s an opportunity for me to stay here and for the 35 or 34 other people in the program that I’m in, and however many other programs had an early expiration of their contract… I’m hoping that if there’s still time for that, that we can stay housed. There certainly doesn’t need to be one more person out without a place to live and a bathroom to use, a kitchen to cook in, and a pretty reliable way to keep warm or cool.
Recently, there have been poles with signs erected saying ‘no camping here’ in places where people have traditionally gone out and camped for two weeks at a time. So [homeless people are] less welcome on the streets, and I don’t blame people. I would be concerned with somebody outside my house in a vehicle. But where do they go? Where? Where do you go? You have to be close to food, water, a bathroom.
If you have very specific housing needs and you need a place inspected right away, things rent or were renting very quickly in Denver, and especially if they were the kind of place I could live in. I think fair housing assistance, both in the way of advocacy and legal representation, was already stretched beyond its limits, and it’s extremely important to have those things. It’s important to have people who can help you deal with difficult landlords. There are a lot of dishonest people out there now and there are people that do not care [about] the situation you’re in. If they can take advantage of a situation, oftentimes they will.
It’s extremely humiliating to have to ask somebody if you can put some things at their place so that you’re not packing around everything you own. People should maybe start giving away or selling things they don’t need and have a little space ready, just in case somebody they know ends up unhoused and needs a place to store some things.
People should not make assumptions that their grandma or mom, elderly, mom or disabled whoever in their life is somehow getting by. People should start checking on people who rely on social programs and make sure that they’re OK. And as things change, they should make sure that they have food to eat and a place to stay clean.
Steve Heisman, executive director of HABcore
Steve Heisman runs HABcore, a permanent supportive housing provider on the Jersey Shore. He says the organization operates on tight margins, and must take out loans each year to support itself until $3 million in HUD grant funds arrive. The funds are about half of the organization’s operating budget. 80% of those grant funds were scheduled to renew on Feb. 1. In a typical year, the money comes a few months late, leaving the organization to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt every year and pay it back quickly when funds come in. This year, with no communication from HUD field offices and no contracts in hand, Heisman is worried that the organization will not be able to pay back its debt.
The organization rents from landlords and then subleases units to people who are chronically homeless, according to HUD’s definition — people who have one disabling condition and have been homeless for a year or longer — covering their rent and providing them supportive services. The average resident has been in the program for five years, but some have been there as long as 15 years. A third of residents are currently working.
Steve Heisman: This process is something that I’m used to. I always knew that we would get [HUD funding] in the long run. So whatever I had to do to figure it out, I would do it, knowing that someday we would get reimbursed. I don’t know that today, so I’ll have to make a decision each month: Does the new information tell me that there’s a good chance that we’re going to get reimbursed, or do we have to start having a conversation with our landlords and with our tenants about payments are not going to keep coming? We’ve already paid February and March.
I’ll be able to go a minimum of six months on the line of credit. Maybe I can mortgage one of our properties or take out another line of credit on a different property that’s not encumbered. If I don’t feel confident that the money will come at some point, I might make that decision next month.
I’m just trying to avoid that because they’ve already got it rough. There’s people with mental health issues, there’s people with substance abuse issues, there’s people with chronic health issues like cancer, people with physical disabilities, people suffering from domestic violence. They’ve got special needs, they’ve got families, they don’t make a lot of money, and it’s already hard to make ends meet. I don’t want to drop any kind of bomb on them that I don’t know is completely necessary.
Eviction takes a long time, even when it’s for nonpayment of rent. If this is happening to us, this is going to be happening to a lot of people, and the courts are going to get overwhelmed. The calendars are going to get backed up. The constables who do the lockouts are going to get backed up. So I see this dragging out for a long time.
It’s not only the homeless who are going to be affected. It’s going to be the people whose jobs are going to be affected because they provide the services. It’s going to be the landlords who don’t have the rental income coming in. Then it’s going to be the banks who don’t get the rent, who don’t get their mortgage payments and have to make the decisions that they’re foreclosing and then whatever trickle down effect that has on local business because people don’t have the income to go spend that they were normally going to spend. This chaos is going to spread throughout the business community in a lot of different ways.
Corina Dechi, formerly homeless foster care support worker
She grew up in foster care and became homeless when she aged out of the system at 18. After going through a divorce and moving back to her hometown, she began working at El Paso Human Services teaching foster youth adult living skills. There, she was eventually offered a full-time job, funded by a Continuum of Care grant from HUD.
Her job allows her to pay rent on an affordable studio apartment in El Paso. While she fears entering homelessness again if she can’t find another job, she is most worried about the impacts on foster youth.
Corina Dechi: I work with youth between the ages of 16 to 18 and I provide adult living classes. Even though they’re in foster care, some of their foster parents don’t teach them basic things like getting an apartment, how to sign a lease, how to get your first bank account.
Since I’ve been in this position, I can see myself in the other youth’s eyes, as I was once in their place. I once took these classes. I’ve been in this situation, so I tend to make a stronger connection with them compared to somebody that says they know what they’ve been through. For them to hear, “I know what you’ve been through” from a person who absolutely has not been through what they’ve gone through, sometimes they can get mad or offended or they don’t want to open up.
I went through a lot of trauma. I went through being put into mental hospitals, being put [on] medication, a little bit of everything. The way I see this, I’m just giving back, because foster care helped me a lot. I wouldn’t be where I was, and I wouldn’t have matured to the person that I am, if I didn’t have good people that surrounded me. So I love my job, because I feel like I’m making a difference — even if I make a difference in one child, that’s already enough for me.
The main concern is, are we going to have enough housing assistance for you? Specifically benefits such as SNAP [Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program]— some of the kids have expressed concerns that if they take away SNAP, it’ll be a lot for them, because they don’t make enough, they barely afford to pay their rent.
A lot of our foster youth are parents, and they depend on the reduced child care because they can’t afford to pay full child care, which is normally $500 or $700. How are they going to work when they can’t afford child care? (Note: Head Start programs have seen delays in federal funding since the Trump administration took office and ordered a pause on federal grants, although some programs were eventually able to access funds.)
I kind of skimmed through [job listings], because you have to be prepared if something happens. I really hope I don’t struggle like I did in the past. And I hope that if it were to happen, I hope that somebody would let me know in advance, so that I can start finding something else. I try not to let it stress me too much, because the more I think about it, the more I’m going to become worried. I’m just hoping they’ll continue to have these grants, because [otherwise] the population of homelessness will go up, especially youth. A lot of these youth are barely getting back on their feet. Some of them don’t really have any family at all, so they don’t have anybody to depend on. So they depend on these grants that provide housing.
Susana Reza, executive director of El Paso Human Services
Susana Reza has operated El Paso Human Services, the nonprofit that employs Corina Dechi, for 40 years. El Paso Human Services has a HUD grant for permanent supportive housing that is set to renew in October. Typically, they don’t receive a grant award letter or communication from HUD until later in the year. But the nonprofit is small, and uncertainty about funding has made both clients and staff unsure about the future.
El Paso Human Services runs a young men’s transitional living center that has 15 beds and serves 80 people throughout the year. The residents are between the ages of 18 and 25 and include former foster care youth as well as other homeless youth. The organization recently opened a young women’s shelter and provides adult living classes and social support to current and former foster youth.
Susana Reza: I’m hoping that if we’re not going to get awarded, if there’s going to be some changes, that we hear about them with enough time that we plan for closure. But this has never happened before. I have no idea what the whims are of our government right now.
People are in need. We just opened up a women’s shelter in December. It’s only been in operation less than 90 days. It’s already at full capacity. Are we going to continue [to have] funding for that? God knows.
We’re in a different world right now. I don’t recognize it. Different parties take over administrations every four years, and we know when liberals are in place, that usually our programs do well. When conservatives are in place, usually we have some cutbacks, cut downs, you know – we understand that. We expect that the pendulum swings back and forth. I’ve been in business 40 years, and so I know [that if] you sit it out long enough, the pendulum will come back. We’ll pick up somewhere, we can go out and get grants that can help us bridge until we can get our footing back, so that we don’t have to shut down or turn away clients.
But right now, it’s a different environment. With all our experience and years of working in this, I have no clue as to how things are going to be. It’s a different world.
We already have a crisis in homelessness in our community and others across the nation, and for us to make that situation worse, knowingly and voluntarily shutting down programs, I just don’t get it. I hate to see what the future is going to look like. It’s just very unsettling. My staff looks at me for words of comfort, and I don’t know what to tell them. Our clients do too, and I don’t know what to tell them.
If you work with HUD, have knowledge about the Trump administration’s HUD policies, or are a service provider whose federal funding has been delayed by the Trump administration, please reach out to housing@nextcity.org using a secure device.
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