Leaders and Organizers for Tenant Empowerment
42 Seaverns Avenue/Jamaica Plain/MA/02130 * 617-522-5133 * lofte.ne[email protected]
HUD Tenants Demand Congress Reject Trump’s “Dangerous” Plan to Slash HUD Rental Assistance by 44%
For release: May 9, 2025
Contact: Michael Kane
617-233-1885 [email protected]
HUD housing tenants from across the US today demanded immediate rejection by Congress of President Donald Trump’s extremist proposal to slash HUD rental assistance by $27 billion, 44% below current levels, and impose a two year time limit for how long ‘able-bodied’ renters could receive assistance. The proposed “deep cuts” affect every form of housing assistance, including Project Based Section 8, Section 8 Vouchers, Public Housing, and Elderly and Handicapped Housing.
The cuts were detailed in Trump’s “skinny” budget proposal released on May 2nd, 2025, alongside catastrophic cuts to Health and Human Services, Environment and other programs, in order to pay for massive tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires
The budget is not yet final. Trump is expected to file a more detailed budget request for 2026 later this spring. Congress would then have to approve it to go into effect, as soon as October 1, 2025.
The two-year time limit would force millions of able-bodied, low income working renters out on the street. “If this present administration takes my housing voucher away, my daughter and I will be homeless. It’s that simple,” says Desi Lou, 65, of Empower DC in Washington, DC. “Trump’s proposal would snatch away the livelihoods of some of the very people who voted him into office.”
“This isn’t just policy—it’s punishment,” said Alice Robinson, a Voucher tenant, Executive Director of Vision for Families in Dallas, and board member of the Texas Tenants Union. “You cannot gut HUD, cut staff by nearly half, slash fair housing enforcement, and then say you care about American families.”
“Replacing Section 8 with Block Grants will devastate already underserved communities. Families, seniors, and people with disabilities will be pushed further into poverty, segregation will surge, and the very promise of equal opportunity will be stripped away.”
Adds Robinson, “I’ve been homeless before, and don’t want to be homeless again. We urge Congress to listen to the people and reject this dangerous and inhumane proposal.”
“These HUD cuts will negatively impact people like me who live in an aging complex in dire need of repairs,” says Filian Ferguson-Rivers of Hillcrest Towers in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Fillian is a member of Arkansas Renters United. “I want to live with some peace of mind that the programs I rely on to stay housed are going to continue existing for me and my neighbors "
“Only one in four people like me who need federal rent assistance can get it today—a major cause of homelessness,” says Eric Colin-Smith, a disabled, elderly Voucher tenant in Boston, Massachusetts. Adds Charlotte Rodgers, a long-time Brooklyn tenant leader and co-founder of the Leaders and Organizers for Tenant Empowerment (LOFTE) Network, “We need more, not less, Section 8 assistance to meet peoples housing needs.”
The proposed cuts come in the wake of DOGE plans to reduce HUD staff by 48%, including 50% of Public Housing staff who administer Section 8 and Public Housing programs, and a 77% cut to HUDs Fair Housing enforcement staff. One result will be a spike in racial and economic segregation as both Vouchers and HUD’s enforcement capacity are slashed.
In 2018 and 2019, then OMB Director Russell Vought, who has now returned to his previous OMB role, proposed to phase out all federal rent subsidies for 9 million extremely low income people over 10 years, starting with a rent increase from 30 to 35% of income for rent—an immediate 22% rent hike in the first year. Tenants and allies were able to defeat these cuts with bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.
“Vought’s latest proposal is even more extreme,” comments LOFTE Co-Chair Michael Kane, a long-time housing advocate in Boston. “Replacing all HUD rental assistance with 44% less money and a two year time limit, would force States, housing authorities and owners to displace millions from their homes within the first two years—not over 10 years.”
Kane noted that converting federal programs into Block Grants to local governments, at reduced funding levels, is a favorite nostrum of far right opponents of social programs since the 1970’s. “Block grants mask funding cuts and shift blame onto local governments and owners and away from federal elected officials when the inevitable cutbacks occur,” adds Kane.
The proposed Section 8 cuts are in addition to the $1.5 trillion in 10 year cuts to programs such as Medicaid and SNAP already voted by Congressional Republicans, to pay for an extension of $5.5 trillion in tax cuts to the rich, which are set to expire this year.
“Trump’s Section 8 proposal is a recipe of inequality, segregation, and crime against the most vulnerable. If adopted, it would increase homelessness and poverty across the US. It will only make the billionaire class richer, at the expense of the working class,” said Yanira Cortes, a Voucher tenant in Ocean County, New Jersey, and a leader in the Greater Newark HUD Tenant Coalition. “We demand Congress reject this proposal.”
Formed in 2022, Leaders and Organizers for Tenant Empowerment (LOFTE) is the national tenants organization representing 5.5 million families in privately-owned, federally-assisted multifamily housing. LOFTE’s mission is to empower residents to save and improve their homes as affordable housing.