READING — Groups that serve unhoused people in Berks County may have to abandon a proven housing model or risk losing millions of dollars under expected rules from the Trump administration.
The president’s threat to end financial support for Housing First programs comes as the county experiences record amounts of unsheltered people. At the moment, nonprofits responsible for providing housing are stuck in limbo without further guidance.
Housing First programs are designed to have few, or even no, barriers to individuals obtaining reliable and permanent shelter, because once people are housed, it becomes more attainable to meet their other needs. Once sheltered, individuals also receive wrap-around services, such as job training, substance use support, or mental health counseling.
To turn from Housing First policies would be a total “paradigm shift” of the current way cities and nonprofits address homelessness, said Jack Gombach, the City of Reading’s managing director.
Elise McCauley is assistant director of the Berks County Coalition to End Homelessness, which works with a network of nonprofits to use federal funding on a slew of local projects, including permanent housing options. As the nonprofit sector navigates both federal and state budget delays, McCauley said these groups fear loss of services, layoffs, furloughs, and even closures without funding.
“It's gonna get really scary, really quick,” McCauley said.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order in July instructing the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to end support for Housing First policies. HUD has yet to release guidelines for next year’s grant applications, which are typically due at the end of September. But internal documents obtained by Politico show HUD is preparing significant funding cuts for permanent housing programs.
Berks County is seeing a growing number of individuals experiencing homelessness for the first time, according to the yearly Point in Time count. The PIT count cannot represent the exact number of people facing homelessness, but it acts as a base number for the next year.
In June, a count found 677 people experiencing homelessness, including 257 people without shelter and 324 people in emergency shelters. The count represented the highest number of unsheltered individuals ever recorded in the county.
What does Housing First mean?
Historically, people experiencing homelessness had to meet certain criteria before qualifying for permanent housing. Housing First policies opened the door for support more quickly, regardless of a person’s extenuating circumstances.
Depending on the city or county, outreach workers normally evaluate unhoused individuals and determine that person’s level of vulnerability. Their personal information is then put into the Homeless Management Information System for workers to keep track of what services the person has received, where they normally sleep, what organizations work with them, and other distinguishing factors. If housing becomes available for that person, their local caseworker notifies and helps them.
Before Housing First policies became the norm in the United States, those individuals may have needed to prove sobriety for a certain amount of time or have a stable job before being housed. However, the approach has changed because housing experts have said people without reliable housing have a hard time maintaining good mental health, financial stability, or sobriety.
Once housed, they gain more access to tools to help them stay so.
“You can't put somebody in a house who hasn't successfully been housed before and expect them just to know what to do,” McCauley said.
The policies can seem abstract to people who do not work with the unhoused, McCauley said. National homelessness collectives, including the Berks coalition, think Housing First is one of the most effective ways of keeping people in housing while also lowering costs for others.
Cities with a rising homeless population tend to have higher emergency, policing, and hospital costs, McCauley said.
“Housing First isn't just about being nice to people,” she said, adding “It's more than that. It's also a benefit to the whole community.”
What did Trump’s executive order say about Housing First policies?
Titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets,” the crux of the executive order rests on the idea that the housing system (nonprofits, states, municipalities, and unhoused people) is not being held accountable for the taxpayer dollars it spends.
The executive order says Housing First policies “deprioritize accountability” and do not promote “self-sufficiency.” He directs HUD to focus grant efforts on programs that have results-driven metrics and end support for Housing First.
He also told HUD, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Transportation to instead prioritize grants for cities that enforce civil commitment for unhoused individuals with mental illnesses and that do not allow people to sleep on the streets (known as urban camping).
“Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order,” the order reads. “Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.”
What’s next?
David Barr, Reading’s community development director, told Spotlight PA he is concerned about how the order will impact the city’s eligibility for grants, in part because it has encampments. Clearing them without offering a place to go would likely send people into hiding, he said.
HUD is essentially telling cities it will “assess your compliance with this executive order in determining whether you get that grant or not,” Barr said.
McCauley said county nonprofits have increasingly won more federal money for Housing First projects in recent years, bringing the annual total they can apply for to $5 million. Following publication of the Politico article outlining potential federal cuts, she said those dollars were “heavily at risk.”
The coalition is operating as normal, but that could significantly change after HUD grant guidelines become available, McCauley said. It will have to evaluate how to best help people if it becomes ineligible for significant funding under current programs, especially as local emergency shelters already are operating at capacity, and the Reading Housing Authority’s waiting list for vouchers is closed.
The coalition’s team is ready to pivot if needed when the guidelines are released, she said.
“If it's going to hurt people to not do Housing First, because we're going to lose millions of dollars, then we're going to have to reevaluate what we're doing,” she said.
The coalition estimates that around 70% of unhoused people last year in Berks County were experiencing homelessness for the first time, McCauley said. Almost 80% had a job or some kind of income, but they simply could not afford housing, she added.
McCauley estimated that rental assistance is the most requested need, but shelters are the most utilized. She said the coalition gets calls from people who lost their housing asking for a safety net, but there aren’t enough resources to meet the demand.
“We have to tell them that there is none,” McCauley said. “And that's really hard for people because people assume that there's help.”
Reading is working to implement a previously awarded grant to create a new type of housing in the city. However, Gombach, Reading’s managing director, said nonprofits are hesitant to partner in new initiatives because they worry about losing their own federal funding if the city does not follow the order.
“It’s just a big unknown,” Gombach said.