The partial shutdown of the federal government over President Donald Trump’s request for border wall funding will undoubtedly result in vulnerable people losing their shelter, say housing experts and employees at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Seniors, low-income people, and people with disabilities could end up losing their access to housing, now that HUD can no longer serve them.
Michela Zonta, senior policy analyst of housing policy at the Center for American Progress, said that the number of people who aren’t stably housed will multiply if the shutdown doesn’t end soon. (ThinkProgress is an editorially independent newsroom housed at the Center for American Progress.)
“It’s a very serious problem and goes beyond the 800,000 federal workers,” Zonta said. “This is going to affect millions of people that are now subsidized for their housing costs, not to mention those affected by the shutdown in other policy areas. This is a gigantic problem, especially because affordable units are in great shortage.”
The agency allowed hundreds of HUD Project-Based Rental Assistance contracts, including Section 8 to expire, in some cases before the government shutdown, according to The Washington Post’s analysis of the National Low Income Housing Coalition data. About 500 more contracts are set to expire at the end of next week, and another 550 in February should the shutdown continue.
One rental assistance program that is affected is the Section 202 program, a rental assistance program for elderly households. Voucher-based subsidies in the Section 8 program funding will run out if the shutdown goes through the end of February. This is bad news for folks trying to pay their March rent.
“There are households that are currently served by [Housing Choice Vouchers Program] that will be behind with the rent so they are at risk of eviction, and especially with March 1 deadline comes for them to pay their rent,” Zonta said. “That is a pretty large group.”
Voucher-based subsidies, the most widely used Section 8 program — which tenants can take to any landlord — have remained fully funded. But if the shutdown continues through the end of February, funding for the program will run out, meaning that the March rent of 2.2 million Section 8 households would be left unpaid.
People may also have to live in subpar conditions with a lack of funds to make needed repairs, Zonta added.
“When it comes to public housing, capital funds that are used for maintenance and improvements are not being paid right now. Some of the operating funds are not received by housing authorities so there are also all these public housing residents who will have to leave without critical repairs or maintenance.”
Tenants have told the media that landlords are already threatening them with eviction. In Maine, Westbrook Housing Authority has said it will won’t release Section 8 vouchers until it is sure the government will pay, Bangor Daily News reported. People at HUD and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) who normally help seniors, people with disabilities, and low-income people with housing issues are unavailable. Some of those workers only recently discovered their own housing was secure. This week, the D.C. council voted to pass the Federal Worker Housing Relief Act of 2019 which says that, during a shutdown, judges must stay motions of eviction or foreclosure against both federal workers and contractors.
People who work for HUD and asked not to reveal their real names out of fear of retaliation said that they are upset with how the shutdown is affecting people who rely on their agency. Workers opted to use they/them pronouns to further conceal their identities.
“What makes me very upset is the thought that people who are receiving subsidized rent, they’re not going to get that in February and it’s already coming out that a lot of landlords are saying if you can’t pay full rent, you’ve got to go,” said Jordan, who works for HUD. “There are seniors who are in senior residences and they could potentially be affected. I can’t imagine the volume of people who would be evicted because the government is not getting that money sent to them.”
Lee, another HUD employee, told ThinkProgress earlier this month about one particular case of a woman potentially becoming homeless due to the funding lapse. The woman’s housing authority wasn’t accepting her medical documentation, and Lee needed colleagues to help her file a fair housing complaint and maybe reach out to the housing authority to resolve the issue informally. But Lee is no longer working. They said they’re upset with people who consider the word “nonessential” to mean that civil rights work at agencies doesn’t matter.
“That is exactly what the federal government should be doing,” they said. “It’s in times of stress that people get taken advantage of. Landlords not getting HUD money are not going to want to continue in the HUD housing choice voucher program which is a component in providing affordable housing in this country. We already have a shortage.”
HUD Secretary Ben Carson penned an op-ed in the Washington Examiner last week in which he wrote that “one of the most frustrating things” during his tenure as secretary was alleged Democrat efforts to delay nominations for positions in the federal government. During the longest government shutdown in government history, Carson said delays in the nomination process are “games employed by one side of the aisle to deny the other side its proposals [which have] the deleterious effect of hurting the general public.” Carson never acknowledged the shutdown or its effects on anyone served by HUD in his op-ed.
In the meantime, housing authorities and non-profits are trying to figure out how to best serve vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, people with disabilities, and families with young children. Atlanta’s housing authority is creating a “worst-case scenario” while it waits for the shutdown to end, the Atlanta-Journal Constitution reported. It is reaching out to charities and businesses for funding. People who depend on these funds living in urban areas, particularly New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and Washington D.C., will be most affected by the shutdown.
As Jordan lamented what would happen to people who depend on subsidized housing, they described the president has “someone who doesn’t really have a soul.”
“It’s not impacting him. His daughter-in-law was like ‘Let them eat cake. It’s worth the pain,'” they said of Lara Trump’s recent comments on the shutdown.
Jordan said they wonder how career staff at HUD will interact with the Trump administration staff once the shutdown ends.