Project 2025, Image Courtesy the Associated Press
For informational/educational purposes on what might be forthcoming about housing in the new Trump administration, we are summarizing the housing policy proposals from Project 2025, with an emphasis on what is proposed for the short term. While these summaries may not be precisely predictive of the incoming administration’s ultimate actions on housing issues, they represent recent thinking on housing from people in Trump’s orbit (e.g., Dr. Ben Carson, Trump’s former HUD Director, was the author of Project 2025’s housing chapter).
“First-Day and First-Year” Housing Proposals
Some of the relevant, main proposals for housing during the first-day and first-year are:
- De-professionalizing HUD: Many management-level civil-service positions in HUD would be replaced by political appointees. This would mean losing professional staff with institutional knowledge in favor of people who are more responsive to political whim.
- Ending specified HUD anti-discrimination programs: Downsizing HUD’s commitment to fair housing, programs like Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing and the Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity program (which was designed to prevent appraisal discrimination) would be terminated.
- Restricting federally-funded housing to US Citizens only: Project 2025 proposes that all federally-assisted housing would be available to US Citizens only. Right now, federal housing programs’ treatment of immigrant status is inconsistent. While most federal housing and community development capital sources (e.g., HOME, CDBG, LIHTC) do NOT discriminate on the basis of immigration status, some non-capital federal housing programs (most notably vouchers and public housing) have citizenship requirements. Even so, most voucher programs and public housing developments allow for full household eligibility as long as at least one member of the household is eligible (i.e., mixed status households are eligible, currently). Under the Project 2025 proposal, even mixed-status households would be ineligible for all federally-funded housing programs. Also, non-citizen legal permanent residents would be barred from federally-assisted housing.
- Ending HUD support of Housing First models: Despite being shown by research/data to be the most cost-effective strategy for addressing chronic homelessness, Project 2025 proposes to end Housing First strategies and require completion of mental health and substance abuse programs before providing individuals with permanent housing. Side note, the Housing First model was piloted and then adopted by HUD under the George W. Bush administration.
- Using housing programs to incentivize traditional household formations: For example, Project 2025 proposes to “reweight waiting list prioritization for two-parent households.” This example would give housing preference on the basis of familial status and is a potential violation of Fair Housing laws.
- Increased tenancy and regulatory requirements for federally-assisted housing: Without much specificity about which requirements would apply to which programs (limits would apply to vouchers, for example, but also likely other programs), Project 2025 recommends increased regulatory requirements around residency in federally-assisted housing, including imposing work requirements and eligibility time-limits.
Longer Term Proposal
Longer term, Project 2025 recommends “a wholesale overhaul of HUD that contemplates devolving many HUD functions to states and localities with any remaining federal functions consolidated to other federal agencies” – i.e., to eliminate HUD.