Trump's plan to gut program that houses homeless veterans prompts panic among experts

During Donald Trump's second presidency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to redirect $3.9 billion away from Housing First — a program that got underway under President Bill Clinton during the 1990s.

Trump officials are attacking Housing First as ineffective and claiming that it isn't doing enough to reduce homelessness, especially in major U.S. cities. But according to policy experts interviewed by the New York Times, the program is working much better than Trump allies appointed to HUD say it is.

Times reporter Jason DeParle, in an article published on Christmas Day 2025, explains, "The administration called the policy a permissive approach that had let homelessness rise, while supporters said Housing First was backed by proven science. Housing First provides chronically homeless people long-term subsidized housing and offers, but does not require treatment for mental illness or addiction. It contrasts with programs that condition help on sobriety or work, which Trump officials want to encourage — though there is less direct research to suggest their efficacy."

DeParle adds, "Few aid policies have been studied as extensively as Housing First, and supporters' faith that it is 'evidence-based' lends the debate special intensity. Extensive research shows that Housing First places large shares of its clients in housing. It also appears to have played a major role in cutting homelessness among veterans, which has fallen by more than half."

One of the program's defenders is Dennis P. Culhane, a social policy professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Culhane told the Times, "The primary goal of Housing First is to get people out of homelessness, and that's what it does."

Dr. Margot Kushel, director of the Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, stressed that the homeless need to find housing sooner rather than later.

Kushel told the Times, "You have to catch people earlier, and to do that, you have to create more housing."

But Boston College researcher Thomas Byrne warns that programs designed to combat homelessness must take into account the high cost of housing.

Bryne told the Times, "As the share of low-income households with severe rent burdens grows, so does their risk of homelessness."

Read Jason DeParle's full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).