The Effects on the Homeless Nationwide from President Trump’s Budget
[The following message on President Trump’s budget request was issued March 16 by Diane Yentel, President and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, based in Washington, D.C. It is reprinted with permission.]
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President Trump’s budget slashes critical resources used to help keep housed some of the country’s lowest income and most vulnerable seniors, people with disabilities, families with children, veterans, and formerly homeless individuals. At a time when America’s housing crisis has reached historic heights and the lowest income people suffer the most severe impacts, proposals to further cut these vital resources are unconscionable and unacceptable.
President Trump proposes to cut overall HUD funding by 13% or $6.2 billion compared to 2016 levels. When compared to funding levels needed for FY 2017, the proposed cuts amount to a 15% or $7.5 billion reduction.
If enacted, Trump’s proposed budget would result in the most severe cut to HUD since President Reagan dramatically reduced funding in the early 1980s. Reagan’s deep spending cuts ushered in a new age of homelessness with a dramatic increase in the number of people sleeping on the streets, in cars, and in shelters. Years after those shortsighted and devastating cuts, a major infusion of resources were needed for homeless shelters and services. President Trump seems eager to follow in Mr. Reagan’s footsteps, repeating his mistakes and working to make America homeless again.
These budget cuts would have a devastating impact on millions of the lowest income people across the country. More than 200,000 seniors, families, and people with disabilities will be at immediate risk of evictions and homelessness, and local communities will be starved of the funding they need to build and repair affordable homes and revitalize distressed communities.
President Trump proposes to eliminate Community Development Block Grants, the HOME Investment Partnerships program, Choice Neighborhoods grants, NeighborWorks America, and the Self-help Homeownership Opportunity Program. His budget also would eliminate the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates the federal response to homelessness across 19 federal agencies, legal aid services that provide the only resource available to help deeply low income people avoid unwarranted evictions, and resources to help low income families heat their homes in winter.
President Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney would have us believe that their budget would continue to provide housing assistance to the 4.5 million low income families who currently rely on these resources. However, their proposal identifies only $4.1 billion of the $7.5 billion they propose to cut. While they suggest that the remaining $3.4 billion can be addressed through “reforms that reduce costs,” there is simply no way to make up for this funding gap without directly harming the low income people who currently receive and rely on HUD housing assistance.
Moreover, because the president proposes to reduce FY 2017 spending levels for non-defense programs by $18 billion, federal affordable housing resources could face even deeper spending cuts in the short term.
With his budget, President Trump has broken yet another campaign promise – this time, his vow to revitalize distressed communities. HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson has also reneged on the commitments he made during his confirmation process to “house as many families as possible in safe, affordable housing…and look for ways to expand affordable housing options everywhere.”
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) recently released report, The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes, the U.S. has a shortage of 7.4 million affordable rental homes available to the lowest income people. Every state and congressional district is directly impacted by the growing housing crisis. Because of chronic underfunding of rental housing assistance programs, just one in four of the poorest people in America get the housing assistance they need. At a time when investments in affordable housing are needed to help low income families access safe, decent homes, achieve economic mobility, maintain better health, improve educational outcomes, and create jobs, these proposed cuts are deeply misguided and wrong.
This budget proposal must not and will not stand. Unlike President Trump’s plan to use budget reconciliation to reduce access to healthcare coverage for 24 million people, any spending bill will require at least 60 votes in the Senate. We will work with allies in Congress and with residents, partners, stakeholders, and advocates across the country to ensure that this budget proposal is dead on arrival. Congress must maintain funding for all critical affordable housing programs.
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Honey on the road to San Francisco with some of the Spanish explorers
NOTES FROM ABOVE GROUND
By Honey van Blossom
(Honey is a Belgian Marxist former strip-tease artiste)
"Cities of the Golden Gate," Raymond Dabb Yelland, 1893. Most illustrations can be enlarged by clicking on them.
Prologue to the story of the Spanish exploration and settlement of California
Seasonal migrations of animals now extinct in California probably created the roads the native people used before the Spanish land exploration of California. “The heyday of giant mammals in North America was the middle and late Pleistocene, an epoch that started 2.6 million years ago and ended 11,700 years ago, around the time the Earth was thawing out from the Ice Age. The gigantic beasts, which migrated from Asia across a now-vanished land bridge called Beringia, are known as Rancholabrean megafauna, after the famous La Brea tar pits in downtown Los Angeles — the graveyard of thousands of saber-toothed tigers, giant bison and other extinct animals.”[1]
The seasonal migrations of the large mammals may have created the substantial roads used by the indigenous people after their arrival.[2]
Paul S. Martin and Richard G. Klein argue that Paleoindian over-hunting led to the extinction of the megafauna.[3] Others argue that climate change was responsible for mammoth and mastodon extinctions. As the last major glaciation ended around 12,000 years ago, climate warmed too quickly for the megafauna to adapt.
