While the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency has yet to officially confirm layoffs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, multiple reports suggest that HUD is expected to slash its workforce by at least 50%—a move that could severely disrupt efforts to combat housing discrimination, homelessness, and eviction.
According to The Washington Post, the forthcoming reductions at the agency could result in a 75% reduction in staff, which employees at the agency said would create even more strain on an office already struggling under the weight of a heavy case backlog.
One anonymous staffer told the Post that their fear is that the upshot of the cuts will be to eliminate some of the crowning achievements of the civil rights movement, like the Fair Housing Act.
“The level of cuts we’ve heard are on the table would effectively end enforcement of the Fair Housing Act in any meaningful sense,” a HUD fair housing staffer said. “The fear within the agency is that the administration’s goal is to gut some of the crowning achievements of the civil rights movement by simply ignoring the laws and refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated to enforce them.”
Although HUD spokeswoman Kasey Lovett tried to downplay the impact of the cuts in a statement to the Post, a series of reports from the Southern Poverty Law Center paints a bleaker picture than the one Lovett wanted to portray in their response.“HUD funding cuts to third parties will not affect HUD’s ability to enforce the laws on the books and serve the American people,” Lovett told the Post. “The Department will continue taking inventory to ensure it is stewarding taxpayer dollars well, while also allocating funding for its intended purpose.”
However, Kirsten Anderson, the deputy legal director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Economic Justice litigation team, indicated in her own statement that the reduction in force and subsequent budget cuts at HUD will absolutely trickle down to organizations who rely on that funding to help vulnerable people.
“We are going to push more people into homelessness with fewer resources to address the crisis,” Anderson told the SPLC. “Communities that have turned towards criminalization and other punitive measures to address the visibility of homelessness will have fewer resources to prevent and end homelessness. We are concerned the use of these harmful measures will increase.”
Lila Hackett, the executive director of the Fair Housing Center of Northern Alabama, was one of 70 Fair housing centers across the country to receive a grant termination for a Private Enforcement Initiative grant, which is a grant given to combat racial injustice in housing and to fund investigations of patterns of systemic segregation in housing.
Hackett, whose grant totaled $425,000, said that this is unprecedented territory for her and her organization.
“Never in my 31 years as executive director of the FHCNA have I ever seen anything like this,” Hackett told the SPLC. “With a 29-county service area, numerous people with disabilities, families with children, and others covered under seven protected classes will be negatively impacted. And with a lack of funding and reduction in staff, our services will be limited or not available.”
A housing justice campaigner for Florida Rising, an organization that works on behalf of economic and racial justice in Florida, told the SPLC that funding reductions at either the national or state levels will affect people from various communities, and they are terrified.
“I don’t think people realize the real human impact that these funding decisions have or that those who benefit are from all walks of life,” the campaigner said. “Folks are terrified seeing the news. ‘Am I going to be homeless after this?’ they want to know, and since the state passed a 2023 law criminalizing homeless encampments, if they lose their vouchers, they can be evicted, then become homeless and also be criminalized. There is a domino effect. Homeless shelters are extremely concerned.”
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