When President Trump set out last month to grasp the organs of small agencies coordinating federal efforts to reduce homelessness, he simply wasn't cleaning up the bureaucratic brush.
He was expanding a conservative war on how billions of people would be spent on federal aid. This is a battle where you can have a life-changing interest for the record number of people sleeping on the streets.
The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, an obscure focus of Trump's rage, is smaller than many Boy Scouts forces. His bigger target appears to be a policy that controls the work of the homeless.
Once a product of bipartisan consensus, council-spurred housing first program offers apartments to chronically homeless people without requiring them to accept services such as drug treatment and mental health care. Advocates say the policy saves lives by getting people safe indoors and getting them to the point of receiving treatment. Advocates believe the successful signing and the number of homeless veterans has dropped by more than half.
But critics say this approach has become a suffocating orthodox that could tear the wider rise in homelessness. Policy opponents say giving people long-term housing without addressing underlying issues like substance abuse or mental illness is likely to become homeless again and they are once again exposed to homelessness. Defenders also say by first supporting housing, the federal government unfairly excludes groups like rescue missions that emphasize drinking.
The sooner the council disappears, the more critics say Trump is quicker to pilot a new course.
“This is the ideology and promotional division for the first policy of failed housing,” said Devon Kurtz, a policy analyst at the Conservative Cicero Institute, an Austin-based research advocacy group. “It would have quickly overturned the Trump administration's work.”
Beyond homelessness, Trump's attacks on bureaucratic ranny provide research into the growth and refined research of his style of governance.
For most of his first term, Trump embraced the current state of homelessness policy. He held the director of the Council of Homelessness, appointed by his Democratic predecessor. His housing secretary, Ben Carson, cited a “peep of data,” indicating that “the first approach to housing works.”
Later in his first term, when homelessness rose, Trump took a more polarised approach, denounced Democrats for what he called a tolerant policy, and placed the first critic of the Vocal Housing, who took over the council. Now, rather than directing the council, he is trying to destroy it, ending the risk of the opposition of the hermit.
“There was a lot of learning that happened in the first Trump administration,” said Kevin Corinth, an economist at the American Institute of Corporate Research and the first skeptic of housing who worked for the Economic Adviser Council during Trump's first term. “I have a much better understanding of how different agencies work and how things can be changed more quickly.”
When targeting interagency councils on homelessness, Trump's executive order gave no reason last month beyond “cutting federal bureaucracy.” Advocates for the agency say his anger is misplaced as the council advances his stated goal of government efficiency.
In coordinating homeless work at 19 federal agencies, the council aims to eliminate duplication and make Washington more accessible to local organizations. $4 million, which eliminates an annual budget, saves as much as the government spends every 18 seconds.
“We're a scientist,” said Jeff Olivet, director of the Biden administration. “Because of these modest investments, agents are accomplishing great things.”
Olivet cited the council's work in Long Beach, California. There, homelessness has risen by more than 60% due to the pandemic, and new mayor Rex Richardson declared a state of emergency after taking office in late 2022. In collaboration with Olivet, he convened a summit on youth homelessness, including four levels of homelessness and private groups, last year to discuss four levels of government, county, state, state, state, and state.
Three new youth shelters have since been opened or built. One is by city and two by private institutions. The city also opened a Youth Training Center and, at Olivet's proposal, the Youth Advisory Committee was established, allowing more federal aid to apply for. The young homelessness in Long Beach last year fell in almost half.
“Our strategy was 100% developed in collaboration with the US interagency council on homelessness,” said Democrat Richardson. “They made our work more efficient and saw the outcomes.”
Congress established the council in 1987 amid concerns that the federal government was slow to fight homelessness. By convening different bodies, just like the Pentagon and the Post Office, the Council intended to lead the government into action. The extraordinary specificity of that obligation reflected the grassroots view that Washington would only act if forced. Legally, the council must publish newsletters, hold quarterly meetings, and appoint at least five local advisors.
Congress became prominent under President George W. Bush, with entrepreneurial director Philip Mangano leading an initiative to reduce chronic homelessness by more than a third. This effort combined support for Mangano's First Principles voices in housing with a well-supplied expansion of rental subsidies. The program provided drug and mental health care, but did not require it.
President Barack Obama used a similar approach to reduce veteran homelessness, and with the support of both parties' presidents, he first gave bipartisan condemnation. Since 2009, homelessness among veterans has fallen by about 55%, and the council has supported the work. Along the way, Congress wrote rules in favour of the first housing program for grants that currently distributes around $3.5 billion a year. What began as a policy has become a move, as it pledged to “end” the homeless.
However, the backlash continued as homelessness began to rise overall in the late 2010s. Progressive denounced the rise in rents and called for more help, but conservatives questioned research claiming housing was first functioning. Treatment First Group sought parity for funding.
Some conservatives said the Biden-era council overemphasized race and gender. The strategic plan used the term “fair” variation almost 100 times and approved “culturally appropriate and gender-affirming housing resources.”
When the culture war opened up a new front, Carson, the former housing secretary who first promoted housing, used Project 2025, a conservative policy guide, to label it as “The Idea of ​​the Far Left” and took responsibility for promoting it.
Supporters continue to view the council's work as a practical problem-solving. After Mike Johnston was elected mayor of Denver in 2023 with a pledge to move 1,000 people off the streets, the city has become one of seven sites that have embedded federal advisors to tackle unsheltered homelessness.
Advisors to the Department of Housing and Urban Development helped Denver secure a federal exemption that made rental aid easier to use.
By increasing the amount the government can pay the landlord, the exemption has expanded the pool of apartments that can be applied to people who have been defilled. Also, by providing “estimated qualifications,” you can move around by providing a process that takes several months to assemble documents such as revenue records and ID cards. Some people die on the street in the middle of pending documents.
Democrat Johnston surpassed his goal, with Denver's unsheltered homelessness falling more than 10% in his first year, but nearly a quarter of the surrounding area. The council was “an incredible partner,” he said. “It may have taken years to approve such a waiver. We may be waiting for it now.”
Trump's order will not abolish the councils that exist in the law, but will reduce it by “maximum scope.” The council will expire in 2028 unless Congress renews its legal approval.
Kurtz of the Cicero Institute, who was called “a step in the right direction,” said the bigger goal for living in the first critics was to have Congress change rules in favour of the federal grant approach.
Not all critics on the council want it. The CityGate network represents over 300 rescue missions and other faith-based groups, many of which run programs focused on treatments that have been excluded from federal aid. Group CEO Tom De Vries first moved policies from home to focus on drinking and mental health care.
However, he calls for the council to be preserved for the same reasons, taking into account its establishment almost forty years ago. The homeless need Washington's attention.
“Under new leadership, you can use it as a tool for good,” he said. “Homelessness is one of the biggest humanitarian crises we face as a society. There are benefits to focusing on one institution.”
