Late last year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced deep cuts to long-term housing programs and new requirements for renewing existing programs that put 170,000 formerly unhoused people at risk of losing housing. While a federal judge has temporarily blocked these cuts until the issue makes its way through the courts, if they are implemented, D.C. is expected to l lose over $22 million in federal funding, with nearly 1,500 people at risk of losing housing, according to an estimate from the National Alliance to End Homelessness. This comes at a time when low-income and unhoused D.C. residents are already struggling with inflation, benefit cuts, and unprecedented weather emergencies, such as January’s winter storm, which is thought to have played a role in the deaths of four homeless people.
Described as an attempt to restore accountability and promote self-sufficiency, HUD’s abrupt change follows a July 2025 executive order and proposed anti-homeless legislation making its way through Congress, aiming to effectively criminalize homelessness and calling for the involuntary movement and institutionalization of unhoused people.
These measures are tapping into a growing bipartisan movement to criminalize homelessness and undermine Housing First policies that prioritize providing permanent housing, and which have proven effective at reducing homelessness.
While it’s true not enough is being done about the homelessness crisis in the District, the criminalization and involuntary institutionalization of unhoused people is both unethical and ineffective. To solve this crisis, first, we need to acknowledge its complexity.
Homelessness does not just stem from substance abuse and mental health problems; for many, homelessness can be an unavoidable consequence of violence or environmental or economic disaster. As a result, D.C. does not just have a homelessness problem; it has a displaced population problem. Consider the nearly a dozen families in Southeast D.C. who were displaced from their homes last month by flooding after a water pipe burst due to frigid temperatures, or the people whose homes were damaged or destroyed by severe storms in D.C. and its surrounding counties in recent years.
According to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), a Norwegian research group focused on measuring internal displacements, the United States accounts for nearly a quarter of disaster-related displacements worldwide. In fact, in many other countries, and as defined by the United Nations, many people who we consider homeless would instead be classified as internally displaced persons.
Internal displacement within the U.S. is a growing national crisis. Last year, over 11 million people in the nation faced internal displacement due to disaster, according to a report by the IDMC, a staggering increase over the 202,000 displacements seen in 2023. This pattern is likely to continue as ongoing climate change leads to more extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods, and droughts. In D.C., extreme weather and other environmental factors can often lead to housing instability. Given D.C.’s lack of affordable housing, people and families displaced by disaster can easily end up homeless.
Unfortunately, President Donald Trump has called for the dismantling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the administration has cut $4 billion in disaster response funding, leaving displaced people without adequate support. Combined with other attacks on essential social services which are driving up costs for low-income, such as dismantling the U.S. public health system, cutting housing subsidies, eliminating the 2021 COVID-era eviction moratorium, cutting nearly $1.1 trillion in Medicaid and other health care funding, and removing Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program eligibility for a projected 2.4 million people, nationally, more people than ever in the District are at risk of displacement and potential homelessness.
Jorge Benitez Perez is an organizer providing tenant services in D.C. In his work with community members, Benitez Perez has seen many hardworking people struggle to keep a roof over their heads.
“In the District of Columbia, we are seeing a plight to keep people housed. Much of the District’s economy is built from working class people. From federal workers who have been laid off to restaurant workers that have lost their jobs due to a declining economy or threats from federal agencies targeting workers. The issues just don’t seem to stop piling on top of working-class people,” he said.
A once-in-a-generation rent crisis is one of these issues, with the latest data from UK economics publication Economics Observatory suggesting a hidden eviction crisis is driving people from their homes. Further, a housing shortage combined with the corporate acquisition of existing real estate means housing in the District is less affordable than ever. This struggle is magnified for low-income individuals, vulnerable populations, and people of color still grappling with the impacts of historic and contemporary discriminatory policies on housing and employment. Gender also plays a role, as one in four unhoused women nationally were driven from their homes by domestic violence.
As a public health researcher and former case manager, I have seen firsthand how quickly people can be displaced, whether they are a family whose house was flooded overnight, or the 17-year-old mother kicked out of her house by an abusive partner at 2 a.m. with her 3-month-old in her arms.
A punitive approach to addressing homelessness ignores how systemic inequities shape the loss of reliable housing and create the conditions in which temporary displacement can turn into long- term homelessness. Indeed, the criminalization and involuntary institutionalization of homeless and displaced populations will increase the odds of people remaining unhoused.
Approaches in which unhoused people are provided supportive housing and income assistance have been shown to be both more effective at getting people off the streets and into stable housing and more cost-effective, saving the government money on health care, mental health services, shelter costs, and criminal justice costs better spent on social services and disaster preparedness.
D.C. officials can learn from the successful approaches of other countries. For instance, efforts in Ukraine help people avoid prolonged displacement through a combination of cash and material assistance, investments in sites for safely housing displaced populations, and subsidized repairs of damaged homes. In Canada, displaced people are provided support ranging from cash assistance to free extensions of immigration status.
There has been some progress, such as the D.C. Council’s recent vote to approve the Extreme Heat Eviction Protection Act of 2025, which pauses evictions when the temperature is 95 degrees or greater by 8 a.m., mirroring protections against eviction in below-freezing temperatures. However, some advocates believe other changes are having a negative impact in the face of growing issues. As noted by Benitez Perez, “a city known for having the best tenant protections nationally and being one of the most welcoming cities in our nation is now moving backwards with the passing of the RENTAL Act and the rolling back of sanctuary city protections.”
To avoid disaster, we need to act. We must support policies that prioritize permanent housing and address the true root causes of homelessness and displacement, including climate change and environmental disaster. We need to advocate for programs that support displaced and unhoused community members throughout the city. Finally, we must also treat our unhoused neighbors with the empathy and compassion we would hope to receive if we found ourselves among the displaced.
This article originally appeared in Street Sense’s March 25, 2026 edition.
