Funding anxiety has taken hold of advocates for people experiencing homelessness

Yahoo

01-07-2025

Ann Oliva addresses conferees during the National Alliance to End Homelessness annual convention in Washington, D.C. (Photo: Greg Childress)
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Anna Oliva, the executive director of the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), has never seen advocates for people experiencing homelessness as concerned about the future as they've been the last six months.
The 30-year veteran in the fight to end homelessness told NC Newsline that advocates and others are worried about the current political landscape that has left federal funding for programs for the unhoused fraught with uncertainty.
'Primarily, I would say folks are scared,' Oliva said Monday. 'They're scared — when I say folks, I mean service providers, our leadership, our homeless services leadership, people who are in the system — they don't know what's going to happen.'
Oliva made her comments during an interview with NC Newsline shortly after the NAEH kicked off its annual convention in Washington. More than 2,000 advocates, service providers, nonprofit leaders and people with lived experienced have gathered in the nation's capital to discuss policies and strategies to end homelessness.
'All of this uncertainty is making what are really hard jobs even harder,' Oliva said. 'And it's making the lives of people who are tenants in these programs uncertain in a way that I think is pretty damaging.'
The uncertainty couldn't have come at a worse time. Homelessness in America increased by 18% in 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report (AHAR). The report found 770,000 Americans — an 18% increase over the previous year — experiencing homelessness on a January night in 2024. It was the largest number recorded since HUD began conducting the counts in 2005.
According to HUD, the number of people experiencing homelessness increased in every category — except for veterans — measured during the department's annual Point-in-Time (PIT) Count. The count is a snapshot of the number of individuals in shelters, temporary housing and unsheltered on a single night.
'I would say that right now folks are, they're nervous about the direction that the country is going and how they might try and figure out how to make up a [funding] gap, right?' Oliva said. 'If there is a gap, if there is a cut that's made from the federal government, if the federal government no longer funds the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, what does that mean for them?'
The CoC to which Oliva referred is a community-based planning process and system aimed at ending homeless by coordinating efforts among various stakeholders to provide housing and services to families and individuals experiencing homelessness. The system is largely funded by HUD.
The NAEH has lobbied against budget cut it believes would negatively impact programs to prevent and end homelessness. It has urged Congress to reject cuts to Homeless Assistance Grants and other safety net resources. The Alliance estimates that cuts to the program would eliminate funding for more than 166,000 units of Permanent Supportive Housing, which is a critical intervention for individuals experiencing chronic homelessness.
President Trump's FY 2026 budget proposal calls for $532 million in cuts to the federal government's Homeless Assistance Grants account, the NAEH said in a recent statement.
The conference in Washington is taking place against the backdrop of a Senate debate over President Donald Trump's so-called 'one big, beautiful bill.' The bill stirred controversy in North Carolina over the weekend when U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) voted against it, arguing that it would cause more than 660,000 North Carolinians to lose health care. [The Senate approved the measure in a 51-50 vote late Tuesday morning.]
Trump threatened to run a candidate against Tillis in next year's GOP primary and Tillis abruptly announced that he would not seek reelection.
'What do I tell 663,000 people in two years or three years, when President Trump breaks his promise by pushing them off of Medicaid because the funding's not there anymore, guys?' Tillis said in a floor speech.
Nationally, estimates from the Congressional Budget Office show that the legislation being debated in the Senate would leave nearly 12 million people without health care coverage by 2034. The bill slashes $1.1 trillion from Medicaid, Medicare and Obamacare over that period. More than $1 trillion of those cuts coming from Medicaid.
Oliva said if the budget legislation passes, the advocates and service providers for people experiencing homelessness will have a new set of problems with which to contend.
'We're very concerned about how many people are one medical bill away from losing their housing, how many people need those services in order to maintain their housing over time, how many people will be priced out of the rental market if they have to pay medical bills above their rent,' Oliva said 'There's all sorts of questions that we have about what the impact of that would be in communities.'
Oliva said the impact of Medicaid cuts would be widespread.
'All of these social services and policies are connected, and could have a pretty significant impact on the number of people experiencing homelessness in communities nationwide, red communities and blue communities alike, rural communities, suburban communities,' Oliva said. 'Rural and suburban communities rely much more heavily on federal dollars than urban communities do, and they're going to be deeply impacted by these potential changes should they pass.'