The Trump administration wants to significantly cut funds for federal rental assistance that will help hundreds of thousands of California households buy homes.
The plan, part of the president’s 2026 budget proposal, calls for a 43% reduction in funding available for a variety of “dysfunctional” programs, including public housing and the voucher program known as Section 8.
Millions of people use the program across the country, and the administration said the state is trying to give them more responsibility and flexibility in how the state operates, but proposing “a competent body adults” only received rental assistance for two years, and therefore most of the funds flow to seniors and disabled people.
The proposal attracted acute criticism from advocates of low-income households. Low-income households say they exacerbate the housing affordability crisis, increase homelessness and unfairly punish workers whose bosses simply don’t pay well.
According to the National Union of Low-Income Housing, minimum-wage workers can afford a market-rate one-bedroom apartment in just 6% of U.S. counties while working 40 hours a week. No county can afford such workers a two-bedroom apartment.
“Millions of people will be supported,” said Sonya Acosta, a senior policy analyst with the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning think tank. “I heard during President Trump’s campaign that his plan is to make housing more affordable and that this is really the opposite.”
In addition to cutting rental assistance, the administration is trying to cut down on the money reserved specifically for homeless programs.
For now, the suggestions are just a wish list.
Congress is the government department that writes budgets and approves them, but the president can provide recommendations and reject the budget instead of signing the law.
Acosta said there has been bipartisan support for housing support over the years and hopes it will continue, but there is no guarantee that Trump’s request will be denied.
“I don’t think we can ignore what the administration is doing now,” Acosta said.
In a statement, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner criticised the federal government as “too bloated and bureaucratic to function efficiently,” calling the president’s budget a positive step in streamlining existing programs to “serve the highest standards of Americans.”
The budget proposal covers two major rental assistance programs, but is still not funded at a level to register everyone who can qualify, and many have been waiting for years.
One is traditional public housing. This is government-owned property, such as Watts’ Nickerson Garden, which provides affordable rents for low-income households.
The second is the voucher program commonly known as Section 8. It was launched by the federal government in the 1970s as an alternative to public housing projects.
Unlike public housing, grants under Section 8 can move with low-income tenants to find homes with private property. Tenants usually pay around 30% of their income on rent, and the federal government picks up the rest.
More than 5 million American households use some form of federal rental assistance, with 560,000 residents in California, according to the Center’s estimates of budget and policy priorities.
The Trump administration’s budget proposal will dramatically reduce funding for the rental assistance program and change the way money is distributed.
Today, the federal government allocates money to local housing authorities each year, allowing public housing, section 8 and other programs to run.
The administration said they wanted to suspend that practice and instead send one rental assistance “block grant” to each state, so being able to “design your own rental assistance program based on your own needs and preferences” means maintaining public housing and Section 8 or doing something different.
The administration said it would encourage state funding to the state to ensure that recipients at similar levels can benefit from block grants, but given the restrictions on state budgets, that could prove difficult.
In general, Edward Ring, co-founder of the conservative California Policy Center, praised the idea of a block grant and hoped it would be given directly to local governments so that they could experiment with solutions rather than Sacramento.
Ring said cutting out the overall funding for rental assistance is not beneficial “in the short term” for those who really need it. But such reductions could put pressure on California to take on reforms he said were necessary to make it naturally affordable.
“If we can cut home prices, we can also support people who need help with less money,” Ring said.
Turner reflected the idea of pressure, saying in his statement that the president’s budget proposal would ensure that state and local governments “have skins in the game and that their policies carefully consider how they can disrupt or advance the goals of self-sufficiency and economic prosperity.
Sharon Wilson Geno, president of the National Council of Multifamily Housing, supports the trade group’s efforts to cut the deficit to streamline Section 8 of property owners, but she called the program “critical” and hoped Congress would think about the impact of the proposed cuts.
Matt Schwartz, CEO of the nonprofit California Housing Partnership, sees the idea of a rental support block grant as a threat to the program he said makes homes affordable to millions.
He said members of Congress tend to cut such ambiguous national grants compared to novel funding, specifically targeting singular programs that support its members.
Schwartz said the devastation from Trump’s proposal would extend beyond tenants to landowners and affordable housing developers. That’s one reason why he believes Congress won’t accept it.
“Their districts will be significantly harmed by these [cuts] -No matter your political philosophy,” Schwartz said.
Lourdes Castro Ramirez, chief executive of the city of Los Angeles Housing Authority, said some of the programs aimed at reducing unsheld homelessness, including the presence of tents and other temporary structures.
“These cuts could reverse our progress and further strain our local efforts to resolve the affordability, housing supply and the homeless crisis,” she said in a statement, looking forward to the government working with the administration and Congress “to advance effective housing solutions.”
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