Local News
Local advocates are speaking out against leaked plans to make cuts to Section 8.
Local advocates are sounding the alarm over leaked plans to cut Section 8 housing vouchers, warning the move could push millions into homelessness.
Leaders and Organizers for Tenant Empowerment (LOFTE) spoke out against the Trump administration’s proposed plan to replace 2.3 million Section 8 vouchers with block grants.
Michael Kane, Co-Chair of LOFTE, says the national tenants organization wants to “communicate strongly that this is not acceptable and that there should be no cuts to HUD rental housing assistance – they should be increasing it.”
He continued, “If you cut them, more people will be homeless.”
The leaked plan for ‘deep cuts’ to Section 8 housing vouchers from the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) first appeared in an article in The New York Times on April 17.
Section 8 housing vouchers help tenants cover the monthly costs of apartments, town homes and single-family residences.
According to the paper’s sources, the administration is considering “cutting or canceling out the vouchers” and replacing them with a “more limited system of housing grants, perhaps sent to states.”
Kane said block grants would give local governments more flexibility but less funding, and shift blame from the federal government to local housing authorities.
President Donald Trump’s new budget is expected in mid-May and would need approval from Congress.
Kane said the proposal is even worse than what the OMB director last proposed eight years ago.
In 2018 and 2019, then-OMB Director Russell Vought, who has now returned to his role, proposed phasing out all federal rent subsidies for 9 million extremely low-income people over 10 years, with an immediate 22% rent hike in the first year. The plans never came to fruition.
However, the state’s Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities is preparing for the worst, with cuts to additional benefits for some households, including utility and security deposit allowances.
HUD allots more than 23,000 federal vouchers to the state to provide rental subsidies for eligible low-income tenants living in market-rate apartments.
Sarah Scott, the Director of Leased Housing for Metro Housing Boston, said they are not aware of any additional reductions beyond those already announced.
“We recognize that any significant cuts to these critical housing programs would have a profound and destabilizing effect on both voucher participants and the property owners who work in close collaboration with us to provide safe, affordable housing,” Scott said in a statement. “These programs are a vital safety net for thousands of households across Greater Boston.”
Matt Noyes, the Director of Public Policy at Citizens’ Housing & Planning Association (CHAPA), says Massachusetts is “very fortunate to be in a position” where there are state rental assistance programs that help many people.
“We know rents are too high,” Noyes said. “Way too many people are struggling and paying a much higher proportion of their income to live.”
He added that not many other states have those backups.
As the news continues to break out of Washington, he said, the word “uncertainty” is used a lot these days.
“We are all waiting to see what’s going to happen,” said Noyes. “When and if those cuts happen, we’ll react to them then.”
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