From Housing First to Housing Fourth: Trump's retro plan for the homeless

“Decades of data show that homelessness is fundamentally a housing problem. This administration thinks it’s a flawed people problem."

Allow me to explain what the Trump regime has in store for America’s homeless, and why a so-called “reform” could put thousands of poor and vulnerable people, including children, back on the streets of our cities and towns.

Instead of the “Housing First” strategy we’ve had for years — getting people with addictions or other health issues into stable housing as a first step — the regime is opting for “Housing Fourth” — housing as a reward for good behavior.

On Nov. 13, Trump’s housing secretary snarkily dismissed the Housing First strategy to reduce homelessness as a “Biden-era slush fund.” (These people can’t do anything without smearing or lying about Joe Biden in some way.) The Department of Housing and Urban Development will take millions away from permanent housing assistance and put it into funds for transitional housing.

The HUD secretary claims this “reform” promises to turn homeless people into self-sustaining individuals.

It sounds great, but that approach goes against the Housing First strategy that, over the last two decades, decreased homelessness by 15% nationwide and by a much higher rate in certain states — in Utah, for instance, by 90%.

But, because homelessness remains a problem throughout the country, the Trump regime will scrap Housing First for what the regime’s chief consultant on the problem calls “Housing Fourth.”

It’s Robert Marbut who first used that phrase a decade ago to describe this retro strategy — pack the homeless into large shelters (out of sight) and treat them for their problems; only give them help with housing after they’re shown to be “housing ready.” He even opposes feeding the homeless on the street because that kind of help perpetuates homelessness.

Because he was a player in the first Trump administration, I was not surprised to hear that Marbut was on a recent call with providers to explain the “reform” about to take place.

“Marbut said on the federal call something to the effect of: Permanent supportive housing has grown as an intervention over the past decade [while] street homelessness has increased over the past decade, therefore permanent supportive housing is not effective and is causing homelessness,” says Kevin Lindamood, president of Health Care for the Homeless in Baltimore. “The man apparently slept through his college logic class.”

There are many causes of homelessness, starting with affordability, but the Trump regime wants to blame it on a program that commenced during the George W. Bush administration (not the “Biden era”) to address the problem in a practical way.

“The Housing First paradigm [found] that short- and long-term outcomes were simply better when care was rooted first in housing stability,” Lindamood says. “[Earlier] policies had failed, leaving the poorest and sickest deemed ‘not housing ready’ on the streets, where they got even sicker and often died as a result. Ongoing research led Republicans, Democrats and independents alike toward a greater focus on housing interventions.”

Maryland’s housing secretary, Jake Day, fears the worst.

This Trump “reform” will cut $42 million from state programs that provide permanent housing choices to people faced with homelessness. The move, says Day, could land 4,300 people back on the street.

It’s not alarmist to predict that homelessness will increase, health conditions will worsen, hospitals and jails will be increasingly burdened, and people will die.

“The [Trump administration] thinking is that the largely elderly and severely disabled will simply start working and earning a wage that can cover market rate housing costs,” Day wrote in a weekend email. “It won’t work that way. Thousands of currently housed Marylanders will become homeless (again).”

And thousands more nationwide.

Lindamood, a longtime advocate for the homeless, provided more background:

“Without question, permanent supportive housing paired with intensive supportive services has saved lives and lowered public costs. (Medicaid expansion has given us greater ability to provide comprehensive health services, but that’s now threatened, too.) Homelessness has continued to rise because private housing costs continue to increase with nowhere near the investment needed in housing that’s affordable to people at every income level.

“Decades of data and experience show that homelessness is fundamentally a housing problem. This administration thinks it’s a flawed people problem. And when your premise is flawed, as I learned in my college logic course, everything that flows from it is flawed, too.”