2026 brings new homelessness directive; local agencies scrambling
Subsidized permanent housing is no longer a given for the chronically homeless. Instead, the government is directing more than $3 billion in funds to pay for transitional housing, addiction treatment and state outreach. Not everybody is on board, including the founder of the National Homelessness Law Center and author Maria Foscarinis. She has ideas on how the Housing First model could be resurrected and details other programs she sees as effective in her book “And Housing for All.”
The Trump administration’s new initiative
With the unhoused at a record number of 771,000 in the U.S., The Trump administration has a new plan to end homelessness, involving work requirements, transitional housing and mandatory addiction treatment. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) says it is using this policy to target the root causes of homelessness.
According to a HUD statement, the new plan “restores accountability to homelessness programs and promotes self-sufficiency among vulnerable Americans. It redirects the majority of funding to transitional housing and supportive services, ending the status quo that perpetuated homelessness through a self-sustaining slush fund.”
Critics of the President’s move say the idea of forced addiction treatment has been tried before and didn’t work. That’s when another idea came along that said the way to address homelessness is through housing first.
Housing First
The idea behind Housing First is to house the individual first and then get them the services and treatment they need.
Sam Tsemberis founded the Housing First model in the early 1990s through his New York City organization Pathways Housing First Institute. It acknowledged that even people with severe behavioral health challenges could be stably housed without coercion. Christopher Brzovic writes in this Shelterforce article the approach acknowledged that “relapse and disengagement are part of recovery, not grounds for eviction.” This was a departure from older policies that treated housing as a reward.
Founder of the National Homelessness Law Center and author of “And Housing for All,” Maria Foscarinis told Brick by Brick, Housing First has been supported by many studies and is evidenced based. She says, “People who participate in Housing First are able to maintain their housing and their homelessness is ended.”
One 2022 study showing its effectiveness is from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City which looked at Los Angeles County. It found Housing First significantly reduced rates of homelessness and crime and led to increases in income and employment for participants.
A change in policy which has HUD moving two-thirds of its Continuum of Care money away from Housing First, is “disastrous” says Foscarinis. She says requiring work and treatment are “failed strategies from the past,” and “the problem is only a fraction of the people who could benefit from this program, are able to receive it because the funding is just not there.”
The National Alliance to End Homelessness defines Continuum of Care as “a regional or local planning body that coordinates housing and services funding for homeless families and individuals.”
Thousands are at risk of being back on the streets
Agencies helping the unhoused are now scrambling to meet a January deadline as they apply for the reconfigured HUD funds.
Nationally, they worry 170,000 formerly homeless people risk losing their housing because of the change in policy. The governors of Oklahoma, Texas and Utah have already deprioritized Housing First. This op-ed in The Hill reports, “Utah plans to open a 1,300-bed campus with capacity for involuntary treatment of the most mentally ill and addicted homeless….Oklahoma has directed state agencies to begin clearing homeless encampments and begin removing trash from homeless sites….and Texas has begun enforcement efforts in Austin.”
More than a dozen states have passed laws regulating where people can sleep outside, the article says. Kentucky is one of those states. It passed an anti-camping law in 2024.
A few months later the U.S. Supreme Court issued an opinion, making it easier for communities to fine, ticket or arrest the homeless even when there aren’t any more shelter beds.
There have been hundreds of arrests in Kentucky, including four in Boone County and five in Kenton.
Ohio
The Ohio Coalition on Homelessness and Housing Executive Director Amy Riegel is watching the changes. She says President Trump’s executive order, which moves away from Housing First, puts 10,000 Ohio households at risk of becoming homeless. The National Alliance to End Homelessness says it’s 13,000.
Riegel told Ideastream Public Media, “These are permanent housing units that an individual moves into and while they live there, not only do they have the roof over their heads, but they also have the support of case managers, of behavioral health professionals, of addiction services.”
She worries that “instead of housing them and then having them in a safe, stable place so that they can go to that treatment appointment or go to that behavioral health appointment, we’re going to have to make them stay on the streets and wait to be able to get those treatments and services.”
Cincinnati and Dayton
The Dayton Daily News reports the Dayton region could lose “more than $8 million in permanent supportive housing funding.” It quotes the National Alliance to End Homelessness which says the area could potentially lose more than 1,000 permanent housing beds.
The City of Dayton has been criticized for clearing out a homeless camp this past summer. City Manager Shelley Dickstein says the city is reviewing proposed best practices. She told the Dayton Daily News, “I have called an internal working group across multiple departments to review best practices against our current approach.”
President of Strategies to End Homelessness Kevin Finn anticipates an increase in need with the funding cuts. He says shelter beds aren’t going to magically appear when more people end up on the street.
Further complicating things, plans to build a $5.5 million day center for the unhoused has apparently fallen through in Cincinnati. The city says the Queensgate site is no longer feasible and it will have to find another location, further delaying the project.
Possible solutions
Nationally and internationally homeless advocates are thinking outside the box.
Foscarinis says Finland has nearly ended homelessness by acknowledging housing as a right and spending money to subsidize housing, creating social housing.
There are also programs for people who need even more help. They provide healthcare, mental health supports, substance abuse treatment, job training and childcare.
Vienna has mixed income housing. Its social housing model is also supported by the government which owns much of the land on which the housing is built.
In the U.S., Foscarinis is impressed by steps Seattle has taken to decrease homelessness. An advocacy group was able to get a measure passed by 60 percent of voters in 2025. House our Neighbors gives the green light to an agency which will invest in social housing throughout Washington. It’s funded through an “excess compensation tax on Seattle’s wealthiest businesses. Foscarinis says, “that’s the kind of effort I think is possible and is a sign of hope.”
Looking ahead
Foscarinis recognizes there is a lack of funding for the Housing First model. And a lack of affordable housing. How much would it cost to provide the Housing First model to all households who stayed in a homeless shelter? The National Alliance to End Homelessness did the calculations for 2022.
The article says, “To address this shortfall would require a near tripling of the annual funding for the existing primary homeless assistance programs administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). The estimated one-year cost of $9.6 billion to provide a housing placement to all sheltered households in 2022 alone is almost double the estimated cost of closing the gap in emergency shelter provision, estimated to be about $5.4 billion annually.”
What do you think is the best way is to combat homelessness? Should we stay with the Housing First model or try something else? And how do we pay for it? We want to build community around context and solutions in our cities. Your feedback is very important to the effort, as we continue to dig deeper into the responses to some of our most pressing social issues, including the housing crisis. Click on the green button below to take a short survey to help reinforce and refine our work. Thank you.
