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department of housing and urban development
Trump's DC Occupation Costs 4 Times More Than It Would Take to House City's Entire Homeless Population
"This militarized spending comes at the expense of federal programs—like public housing—that actually do prevent crime and improve health and education outcomes," said researcher Hanna Homestead.
Aug 22, 2025
Last week, when Trump federalized Washington, DC's police force and deployed the National Guard to occupy its streets, one of his main orders was to "end vagrancy" by destroying homeless encampments and arresting and forcibly relocating the people taking shelter there.
But according to an investigation published on Wednesday by Hanna Homestead of the National Priorities Project, in collaboration with The Intercept, deploying the National Guard and "getting rid of the slums" is costing far more than it would cost to simply provide housing to every homeless person in the city.
Governors from six US states have sent troops to Washington to help Trump's effort, swelling the ranks to nearly 2,100 who will soon be on patrol.
According to previous reporting, National Guard deployments cost the US government $530 per guard member each day. Using that figure, Homestead estimated that it would cost just over $1.1 million.
She added that "the number of troops will likely continue to grow. And with no deadline for the DC deployment, those costs could add up for months or even years."
According to the most recent data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), there are about 5,600 people experiencing either sheltered and unsheltered homelessness in DC on a given night. Operating an affordable housing unit for each one of them, the data shows, costs about $45.44 per person, per day, on average in DC.
Providing affordable housing to every homeless person in DC would cost an estimated $255,166, which is 4.3 times less than the cost of Trump's military deployment.
"Taxpayers like you and me bear the cost of this cruel power grab," Homestead said. "This militarized spending comes at the expense of federal programs—like public housing—that actually do prevent crime and improve health and education outcomes."
Last week, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that over 70 encampments had been cleared since Trump's order to federalize the police. She also said that over 600 people had been arrested, though it was not specified how many of them were homeless.
Trump has sought to conflate homelessness with criminality, suggesting that the nation's capital had been "overtaken by violent gangs and bloodthirsty criminals, roving mobs of wild youth, drugged-out maniacs, and homeless people."
While his solution has been a show of military force against people with nowhere to go, a large body of research suggests that the approach of providing "Housing First"—meaning a stable place to stay with no preconditions for sobriety or treatment—reduces crime.
A 2021 study from UCLA found that providing homeless people with targeted housing assistance reduced the probability of committing a crime by 80%.
"Arresting or ticketing people for sleeping outside makes homelessness worse, wastes taxpayer money, and simply does not work," said Jesse Rabinowitz of the National Homelessness Law Center. "The solution to homelessness is housing and supports, not handcuffs and jails."
But in addition to a crackdown on the homeless, the Trump administration is also pushing to eliminate funds for public housing. The White House's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 slashes funding for HUD's Continuum of Care program, which provided cities with funding for initiatives to house the homeless.
According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the proposal would effectively end funding of permanent supportive housing for 170,000 residents and potentially increase the number of homeless people in the US by 36%.
"Arresting people for no reason other than the fact that they have no home is inhumane and unjust," said Amber W. Harding, executive director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. "It is particularly cruel to do so knowing that federal and local housing programs have been slashed and that DC does not have enough shelter beds."
"Fines, arrests, and encampment evictions make homelessness worse, further traumatize our homeless neighbors while disconnecting them from community and support," said Dana White, Director of Advocacy at Miriam's Kitchen, a DC-based homeless services organization. "If policing resolved homelessness, we wouldn't have homelessness here in DC or anywhere else in this country."
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DOGE’s Housing Department Cuts Will Make the Homelessness Crisis Worse
The Trump administration’s actions will mean that fewer people who struggle to keep a roof over their heads will get the help they need.
Mar 13, 2025
A record number of people are struggling to afford housing, and leaders from across the political spectrum have called for action.
But the Trump Administration, including Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) has taken one step after another that will undermine the most effective policies to help people afford housing, including cutting Housing and Urban Development (HUD) staff, withholding urgently needed funds, and making harmful policy changes.
In 2023, 24 million people lived in low-income households that paid over half their income in rent, forcing them to shift money away from other basic needs and often leaving them one setback away from eviction. In January 2024, 770,000 people across the country—an all-time high—couldn’t afford housing at all and were forced to live in shelters, cars, tents, or other unsafe and unstable circumstances.
Rather than squandering resources on costly tax cuts for the wealthy, policymakers should be expanding effective programs toward the goals of ending homelessness and ensuring everyone has a stable, affordable home.
Elon Musk and DOGE have reportedly called for discharging at least half of HUD staff overall, sometimes using tactics that may be illegal. Specifically, the proposals would cut:
- 50% of staff in the HUD office that administers vouchers, public housing, and Native American housing programs, which together help 7 million people afford housing;
- 44% in the office the oversees the project-based rental assistance program, which provides rental assistance to an additional 2 million people;
- 84% in the office that administers homelessness assistance and grants that help communities build affordable housing and recover from disasters; and
- 77% in the office that enforces fair housing laws—one of a series of administration actions that will severely weaken protections for people who face housing discrimination based on characteristics such as race, gender, and age.
Staff in these offices play a critical role in ensuring that tens of billions of dollars of badly needed federal funds are distributed promptly and used efficiently. Layoffs on the scale that DOGE is seeking will lead to delays and waste, resulting in people and communities around the country getting less help to address urgent needs.
In addition, the administration has interrupted the normal flow of HUD funds that are used to address housing needs, again sometimes through means that are likely illegal. HUD attempted in January to withhold funds as part of a broader federal funding freeze, which multiple federal courts have ordered the administration to temporarily halt while they review the action. HUD does not appear to have intentionally withheld funds for vouchers and other rental assistance so far, but the uncertainty created by administration policies has led to payment delays that could cause some landlords to stop accepting vouchers, making it harder for voucher holders to find homes they can rent.
Meanwhile, HUD has yet to deliver any of the $3.6 billion in homelessness assistance funding awarded January 17, which communities are counting on to provide rental assistance, shelter, outreach, and other services to people experiencing homelessness. While HUD notified at least some grantees that they will begin to receive funds soon, the uncertainty has disrupted community planning efforts and the final awards may include abrupt policy changes that could complicate implementation. The administration has also canceled contracts for organizations that help protect people from housing discrimination and provide technical assistance that plays a crucial role in effectively implementing HUD programs—even though the administration provided no evidence that the organizations were failing to perform as required.
Finally, HUD officials have proposed or discussed a series of policy changes that would make it harder for many people in need to receive housing assistance. HUD has said it will publish a rule rolling back non-discrimination protections that guarantee access to safe shelter and housing assistance for transgender and nonbinary people, who experience disproportionately high rates of homelessness. And it has already published a rule weakening fair housing requirements.
HUD officials have also called for evicting or cutting off rental assistance for people who don’t meet burdensome work requirements, a step that would increase administrative costs and expose many children, people with serious health conditions or caretaking responsibilities, and others to severe hardship.
Rather than squandering resources on costly tax cuts for the wealthy, policymakers should be expanding effective programs toward the goals of ending homelessness and ensuring everyone has a stable, affordable home. And they should make targeted reforms to address shortcomings of those programs to make them even more effective at addressing pressing housing needs. The administration’s actions will have the opposite effect, making it harder for people to afford housing and exit homelessness.
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Trump’s HUD Secretary and Our Reverse Robin Hood Housing System
A Trump-Turner housing agenda appears destined to continue the worst aspects of our nation’s approach to affordable housing: a relentless diversion to the already-wealthy of resources supposedly designated for the housing needs of the poor.
Jan 14, 2025
Donald Trump has nominated former Texas state representative Scott Turner as his secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the $70 billion federal agency that administers rental assistance and public housing programs, enforces fair housing laws, and provides community development grants to local communities.
Other Trump cabinet nominees, like potential Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have attracted attention for the ways they may shift the traditional priorities of the agencies they would lead. Turner has flown under the radar.
Perhaps that is because dramatic changes to HUD would need congressional approval, which was denied when Trump tried to slash the department during his first administration. Or maybe it is because, in many respects, Turner does not seem inclined to significantly alter U.S. housing policies.
As for likely HUD Secretary Turner, he is most associated with yet another housing giveaway to the rich.
That is not a good thing.
A Trump-Turner housing agenda appears destined to continue the worst aspects of our nation’s approach to affordable housing: a relentless diversion to the already-wealthy of resources supposedly designated for the housing needs of the poor.
This reverse Robin Hood approach to U.S. housing began in the 1970’s, when the Nixon administration and Congress began switching our affordable housing investment away from public housing to subsidizing for-profit landlords. Now, we fund wealthy landlords, often corporate landlords, via direct payments such as the Housing Choice Voucher program and Project-Based Section 8 program, in return for the for-profit landlords temporarily housing low-income tenants. 558F Low-Income Housing Tax Credits are designed to provide a tax shelter for wealthy investors.
This profit-soaked combination costs taxpayers six times more each year than public housing does. But public housing is far more efficient, for the simple reason that it bypasses private profits. Public housing is also hugely successful in providing high-quality, low-cost housing when there is adequate investment in maintenance and upkeep.
That is why other nations, who have far less homelessness, evictions, and housing-insecure people than we do, prioritize public housing. They divert little if any government support to for-profit landlords. And it is why U.S. for-profit landlords have been pushing for generations to block U.S. public housing from the funds it needs to ensure safety and keep up maintenance. The resulting deterioration of U.S. public housing undercuts competition for private landlords and creates a narrative justifying the delivery of housing dollars to the private sector.
A Subsidy for Gentrification
But those privatized programs are deeply flawed. The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit often leads to rents higher than poor families can afford. The program known as LIHTC has been characterized by housing researchers as “a better-than-nothing gimmick that helps the poor by rewarding the rich.” Even that characterization is too generous for some legislators, who call LIHTC “legalized theft of government assets.”
Similarly, project-based Section 8 housing directs government dollars to for-profit landlords as payment for low-income tenants’ rent. But, like LIHTC, the program allows those landlords to convert their buildings to market-rate rentals after they use the government subsidies to pay off their debt on the properties. By contrast, public housing provides affordable housing in perpetuity.
There is even less lasting impact coming from the largest low-income housing program in the country, Housing Choice Vouchers. We provide a full $30 billion per year in voucher payments to landlords, often large corporate landlords, but those landlords can end their involvement at the end of each tenant’s lease, leaving the low-income renter without housing. It is another low-risk high-yield arrangement for the wealthy and raw deal for the poor: little wonder that the Project 2025 blueprint drafted by Trump supporters champions vouchers even as it slams other HUD programs.
As for likely HUD Secretary Turner, he is most associated with yet another housing giveaway to the rich. During Trump’s first administration, Turner served as executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, which focused on promoting opportunity zones, a program created by Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
The program rewards the wealthy’s investment in economically distressed areas—opportunity zones—with huge tax breaks. But investigations by ProPublica and Congress show that the definition of what areas count as opportunity zones is far too broad, and the guidelines for who benefits from the investments are far too loose. As a result, money invested in expensive hotels, high-rent apartment buildings, and even luxury condominiums as a superyacht marina escapes taxation. Politically connected billionaires lobby for the land where they develop to be designated an opportunity zone, then rake in the benefits.
The Brookings Institution says opportunity zones operate as a subsidy for gentrification. “The direct tax benefits of opportunity zones will flow overwhelmingly to wealthy investors,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says. “But the tax break might not do much to help low-income communities, and it could even harm some current residents of such communities.”
So, despite the relative quiet around Scott Turner’s nomination, we know some important things about him. We know that he champions opportunity zones as an addition to the already abundant tax benefits the U.S. showers on landlords and real estate investors. And we know that he is a fierce critic of anti-poverty programs, as he has made multiple public statements about government assistance being harmful and even disastrous.
But we also know that the likely next HUD secretary is concerned about that alleged harm only when assistance is provided to the poor. The wealthy can count on Trump and Turner to keep the pipeline of government housing money wide open and flowing their way.
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