Last week, the Trump administration unveiled a series of policy changes that state officials say could result in more than 1,000 Mainers becoming homeless. Included are cuts to funding for programs that provide permanent, long-term housing and support services. Reporter Nicole Ogrysko has been following the story and spoke with All Things Considered host Ari Snider.
Snider: So this policy change from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development includes a number of funding restrictions for states. What are they?
Ogrysko: Well, some are in the form of caps. One would limit funding for permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing programs.
Maine currently receives about $22 million for those programs. Now, funding could be cut by two-thirds, to about $6 or $7 million. And the state predicts that as a result, about 1,200 people around Maine would lose their long-term housing — and risk becoming homeless.
What's striking is just how scattered the impacts could be. According to state data, people in more than 100 Maine towns and cities rely on permanent supportive housing vouchers today. This is different from what we know as Section 8. With permanent supportive housing vouchers, recipients get not only rental assistance, they also get support services that are intended to help them stay housed.
And providers say they're predominantly older people, veterans, youth and people with disabilities or chronic health challenges.
Why are these programs being targeted for change?
So the Trump administration says it believes that these programs have perpetuated "never-ending government dependency." It favors spending more resources on short-term, transitional shelters and less on government subsidies for longer-term housing. And it believes that the new policy will encourage more personal accountability.
But housing and social services providers here in Maine say that permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing programs have worked for a long time here. The programs are built around the idea that success starts with having a stable place to live, and that only when someone has secure housing, can they address the factors that may have allowed them to become homeless in the first place.
Chris Bicknell runs the non-profit New Beginnings in Lewiston, which helps homeless and runaway youth.
"People who have a long trauma history and have financial and emotional challenges attached, takes a monumental effort sometimes to acknowledge one's own challenges and make change," he said. "And we want people to be able to have that process in the safety of their own home, not on a street corner."
Bicknell says with fewer dollars to help folks stay in housing long-term, people will be unable to afford to stay where they are.
"Our shelter and our drop-in center will be flooded with 18 through 24-year-olds who are being kicked out of adult permanent supportive housing," he said.
Bicknell says his shelter is already full every day. And Erin Kelly with the non-profit Preble Street says people are already spending months or longer inside shelters looking for a permanent place to live. And she says these changes will place more stress on a shelter system that's already stretched to capacity.
"Folks will just continue to languish even longer than they are now, which then of course would mean for people who are at risk of losing their housing or are likely to become homeless because of these changes, there will be no space in shelters for them to go," Kelly said.
So besides having less federal support for this kind of housing, what else is changing?
The federal government has some new priorities that it's focusing on. Voucher recipients, for example, may be required to undergo substance use treatment.
Grants will also be prioritized for states that have a track record of complying with federal law and immigration enforcement, or those that prohibit homeless encampments or have an anti-camping ban.
Maine does not have a statewide anti-camping ban. Some individual municipalities do. But all of this means that when the Maine Continuum of Care applies for grant funding on behalf of the state it may be less competitive.
Providers and state officials say they're going to do their best to draft an application so Maine has the best possible chance of securing as much funding as possible. But I will add, Ari, I think there's some hesitancy to say too much about how all of this will be approached. Because the announcement from HUD says that it will use information gleaned from "public sources," including newspapers and government reports, as possible factors for choosing grants.
And what about the timing of all this?
Well, that's another problem.
The Trump administration is not automatically renewing programs that were funded last year. Organizations can't apply for a second year of funding until mid-January. And even if they're approved, they won't receive the money until May.
There are programs in Maine that will run dry of their federal support well before May. Social Work Director Erin Kelly says Preble Street has two permanent supportive housing programs with funds that expire at the end of February, and that could put voucher holders in a tough spot.
"Our shelters are full," Kelly said. "There's no guarantee of other housing coming through for those folks, and so it's likely that at least some of those people would be forced onto the streets in March or April. Or be at risk of that."
Snider: Can anything be done about this? Is there a world in which these cuts do not happen?
That's unclear. State officials say there was a failed push to include language to continue funding in the bill that reopened the federal government last week. Now, there's pressure on members of Congress to include similar language in a future spending bill.
In the meantime, Maine Gov. Janet Mills says she's conferring with the state's congressional delegation about these policy changes.
And Maine attorney general Aaron Frey is considering legal action, potentially in alliance with attorneys general from other states.
