HousingWireHousingWire
A federal housing program that provides assistance to as many as 60,000 low-income Americans is reportedly on track to run out of funding by the end of next year.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) program is designed to “assist individuals and families who are homeless, at-risk of homelessness, fleeing, or attempting to flee, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, or human trafficking, or were recently homeless or have a high risk of housing instability,” according to HUD.
But the program’s current appropriations are set to be depleted by the end of 2026, according to reporting based on a letter from HUD that was obtained by The Associated Press (AP).
This could mean that tens of thousands of EHV recipients will have to find other ways to cover their rent payments. One analyst told the outlet that the loss of the program would constitute one of the nation’s largest one-time losses of rental assistance.
“To have it stop would completely upend all the progress that [its recipients have] made,” Sonya Acosta, policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told the AP. “And then you multiply that by 59,000 households.”
The program was implemented by one of former President Joe Biden’s signature pieces of legislation, the American Rescue Plan Act, which was passed in response to the ongoing economic turmoil stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The law allocated $5 billion for the program, but the additional scrutiny of assistance programs since the inauguration of President Donald Trump has led to a wholesale reappraisal of many government assistance and subsidy programs.
“HUD and any type of social safety net was never meant to be a lifestyle. It was never meant to be a hammock, if you will, for people just to rest the rest of their lives on government subsidies,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a recent appearance on conservative news network Newsmax. “But instead, it was meant and created to be a trampoline to project people on a different trajectory.”
According to program data compiled by the AP, the three states with the largest numbers of EHV beneficiaries include California (15,426), New York (9,463) and Texas (3,490). The AP explained that in a letter sent by HUD in March, it advised organizations that disburse the funds to “manage your EHV program with the expectation that no additional funding from HUD will be forthcoming.”
Organizations that are lobbying Congress for additional program funding are not optimistic about their chances, some of them told the AP.
“We’ve been told it’s very much going to be an uphill fight,” said Kim Johnson, public policy manager at the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC).
Last week, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the ranking member on the House of Representatives’ Financial Services Committee, urged committee chair French Hill (R-Ark.) to infuse the program with additional funding in the upcoming fiscal year 2026 appropriations bill.
Waters said that beneficiaries enrolled in the program with the expectation that the funds would be provided until 2030, but HUD’s recent guidance has indicated otherwise. She said that hastening the program’s end would exacerbate issues tied to the ongoing housing crisis and elevate homelessness rates.
