By Benjamin Miller, NLIHC field intern
Housing advocates from around the country gathered outside of the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. on June 27 to protest President Trump’s proposed FY’18 budget. The budget includes a $7.7 billion or 15% cut to HUD and a complete elimination of the national Housing Trust Fund, the Community Development Block Grant program, and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, among others. The rally was coordinated by the National Alliance of HUD Tenants (NAHT) and co-sponsored by Empower D.C. Most at the rally were also attendees at NAHT’s annual conference in Washington, and many are themselves public housing residents or recipients of other federal housing assistance programs, in addition to other federal safety net programs that the president’s budget proposes slashing.
The budget proposal would be devastating to the millions of many low income households who benefit from HUD-administered housing programs. Megan Hustings, interim director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, spoke at the rally and expressed agitation by the budget proposal. Pointing to the history of this moment, Hustings noted that the proposed slashing of the HUD budget has not happened since 1981, with the first federal budget implemented by former President Ronald Reagan—and the clear and immediate impact of that budget was a nationwide surge in homelessness.
Many of the day’s speakers shared the belief that housing is an essential human right. Charlotte Delgado, a board member of NAHT said in her speech, “Donald Trump has demolished the right to have a decent life…Housing is a basic human right.” Speakers also addressed the fact that the U.S. is the wealthiest country in the world, yet our federal budgets year after year still do not make housing accessible and available to all of our nation’s most vulnerable families.
Another spokesperson for NAHT said “You can’t get rid of poor people, you have to make poor people equal people…you can’t trap people in poverty, you have to give us a path out.” The same NAHT representative stated that all of the paths out of poverty starts with a stable home.
Another point that was echoed in speeches and protest signs was that our multimillionaire president is himself a public housing resident. In fact, he does not pay any portion of his income toward the cost of living in the White House—an ironic observation, given the protest’s location in front of the gilded-sign reading “Trump International Hotel.” This point was intended to highlight that one piece of the president’s budget proposal includes a policy change whereby public housing residents would move from paying 30% to 35% of their already limited monthly income rent. In total, approximately 50 attended Tuesday morning’s rally, after which NAHT conference attendees traveled up Pennsylvania Avenue for an afternoon of lobby meetings on Capitol Hill with Members of Congress.
On the Home Front 