The Trump Administration just released their Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for Homeless McKinney funds out of the Housing and Urban Development Department (HUD). It is as batshit as you can imagine. Really you can’t make these things up.
First of all, for years 90% of the dollars had to go to permanent supportive housing, because there are around 50 evidence-based studies supporting this practice. But these folks don’t believe in science. So now no more than 30% of the funds can go to supportive housing. The problem is the funds paid for operating these projects year after year, so that means San Francisco is going to lose up to $50 million in operating funds of a system that is already radically underfunded. That means more homelessness. The McKinney funds are divided into tiers. In what they call Tier 1, SF annually gets $54,674,988, now that would be reduced down dramatically to almost nothing.
The press release HUD sent out said bizarre things like, “In accordance with President Trump’s Executive Order, “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” this NOFO restores accountability to homelessness programs and promotes self-sufficiency among vulnerable Americans. It redirects the majority of funding to transitional housing and supportive services, ending the status quo that perpetuated homelessness through a self-sustaining slush fund.” They also said, “Roughly 90% of the last four years (Continuum of Care) awards funneled funding to support the failed ‘Housing First’ ideology, which encourages dependence on endless government handouts while neglecting to address the root causes of homelessness, including illicit drugs and mental illness.” Wow, are we really returning to the days of welfare queens? Have we learned nothing in the past 40 years?
It is amazing how much the Trump ideology is aligning with local electeds in SF—with recent legislation being introduced to ban all new supportive housing that isn’t recovery housing, and redefining recovery as abstinence only in San Francisco. Even Assemblymember Matt Haney and Supervisor Matt Dorsey got on the Trump bandwagon, and encouraged by some Christian-based groups seeking funding, introduced similar legislation that pits “recovery housing” against “housing first,” completely misunderstanding and attacking the entire concept of Housing First.
Newsom vetoed Haney’s legislation saying nothing prevents municipalities from creating recovery based Housing First models—and the California Interagency Council on Homelessness came out with guidelines basically saying “feel free, just make sure you follow the principles of Housing First.” These include no evictions for relapse, choice in housing, keeping low threshold access and other proven strategies. In other words, don’t do things that increase homelessness. These principles are data driven critical elements for success.
Housing First is not an ideology. It is a proven effective model with a 97%- 98% success rate in San Francisco. Housing First was created after years of failed policy where unhoused people had a slew of prerequisites to get housing such as first successfully completing transitional housing, and once in housing were treated very differently from other tenants. Then science and outcome data demonstrated that it is impossible to address jobs, recovery and other means of stabilization without housing, and that homelessness itself was driving up rates of behavioral health issues. The movement at the federal and state level was to remove barriers, prioritize housing retention through onsite support services, and embrace tenant rights. This approach was studied and found to be successful. However, it was never funded in full. Many supportive housing programs are underfunded and of course the entire approach has nowhere near enough funding to end mass chronic homelessness. This coupled with wholesale defunding of public housing has led to the humanitarian crisis we see today This does not indicate failure of the model, but a need to expand it. But Trump thinks otherwise. So do our local supervisors Dorsey and Rafael Mandelman, and seemingly Mayor Daniel Lurie who supports cutting housing. They seem to forget that for many San Franciscans, they just can’t afford the rent. Almost all those impacted by poverty can never be stably housed without rental assistance due to the structural disparities in our housing market.
The way the McKinney process works is that local Continuum of Care groups rank proposals based on the guidelines. They are given scoring tools as well. Then the ranked proposals are sent to HUD and depending on how much money HUD awards the ranking list is cut off when the money runs out. In this NOFA, HUD also changed the scoring with random politically driven things like 16 points for requiring treatment (proven ineffective), 10 points for requiring participation in 40 hours of support services a week (impossible—that would be one case manager for every program participant) 10 points to reduce encampments (read: sweeps and criminalization—SF will score big on that one) and 17 points for year over year Point in Time reductions.
This is an attempt to operationalize “the Utah Model” which is a massive untested program called an “accountability center” that in 2027 will be located in the deadlands outside of Salt Lake City. The concept fronts as an addiction and mental health services center, but in reality functions like a jail. Those who don’t earn enough to pay the rent are sent against their will. Sadly, Utah had a massively successful housing program that all but eliminated veteran homelessness in the past (surprise: all you have to do is provide housing to solve homelessness), and the funds for this wretched idea are being taken away from those efforts.
The big solution from HUD on longstanding housing projects that would lose funding is that they say they can convert from permanent to transitional housing. However, and this just underlines how inept Trump HUD officials are, this is impossible to do because those current tenants could not stay in the building because since they are no longer homeless, they don’t qualify for the transitional housing. They can’t and shouldn’t be evicted. But that is the only way to transfer to transitional. Not helpful.
OK, here is another fun fact: The Trump Administration can pull funding whenever they want if new projects show they have engaged in any reference to race and if they asked for gender beyond the binary. Since HUD previously required EVERY program to collect correct gender, including non-binary etc., that applies to most providers. This is yet another attempt by the administration to bully municipalities back to the 1950’s. What it means in reality is the only new projects they want to fund are race-blind transphobes.
Which is why they are inviting religious groups to apply. Well, not all religious groups, just the right-wing ones.
This is coupled with elimination of Emergency Choice Vouchers, which were a kind of Section 8 under Biden. Trump is eliminating everything Biden did because he is still hurt he lost to him last time. And he just can’t get over it. This program serves 70,000 formerly homeless households and is being completely eliminated. Over 1,100 households will become homeless in San Francisco as of October 2026 unless some miracle happens and locals are able to replace this on-going funding.
What a sad state of affairs.
