Cutbacks in Federal Support for Social Services Will Only Worsen the Homelessness Situation in New York
7.15.2025
In January, the New York State Bar Association’s House of Delegates and its Executive Committee approved the Report and Recommendations of the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Homelessness and the Law.[1] While the report described in detail the scope of this tragic situation and offered multiple policy recommendations that could result in significant improvements, the current and expected future cutbacks in federal government support for homelessness initiatives and related programs will significantly impede any efforts at improvement and will only make a bad situation worse.
In its report and recommendations, the task force described at length the homelessness situation in New York and the rest of the nation, identified the various causes of homelessness and housing insecurity, described the existing programs and resources available to address the needs of individuals experiencing homelessness and housing insecure individuals and provided a series of policy recommendations to improve this situation that has such a devastating effect on the lives of so many members of our community.
As noted in the task force report, homelessness is a significant issue in the United States that impacts hundreds of thousands of Americans. In 2023, New York State had approximately 15% of the nation’s homeless population. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has been tasked with administering homelessness services on a national level, estimated there were at least 653,104 individuals experiencing homelessness nationwide and at least 103,200 in New York as of December 2023.[2] By December 2024, those numbers had grown to 771,480 nationwide and 158,019 in New York.[3] These estimates are generally recognized as greatly undercounting the number of individuals experiencing homelessness and do not include, for example, individuals who are living in their cars or “couch surfing.”
One of the key takeaways from the task force report is that resources matter. Experience demonstrates that the investment of resources in addressing homelessness can make a meaningful difference, and the report provides examples of several programs, initiatives and other resources that have a positive impact on the homelessness situation and on the lives of those whom it affects.
An excellent example of this is the significant progress that has been made since 2009 in reducing the number of military veterans experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. This is a direct result of the increase in the amount of resources devoted to the support of this population. Veterans have made unique sacrifices to defend the American people and our freedoms, but military service members who have left active duty face many challenges returning to civilian life, including access to housing. Only 5% of Americans are veterans, but 11% of unhoused adults are veterans, and that is likely under-representative of the true magnitude of the problem.[4]
While these figures are sobering, they represent a dramatic improvement over earlier periods in which fewer resources were available to meet the needs of our nation’s veterans. In recent years, the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs has made progress in reducing the number of our nation’s veterans experiencing homelessness through federal funding of numerous programs and initiatives including, among others, the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program, Supportive Services for Veteran Families and the Grant and Per Diem Program. The impact has been particularly profound in New York state. The HUD-VASH program is a collaborative program between the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the VA to provide both housing vouchers and VA supportive services (health care, mental health treatment and substance abuse counseling) to help homeless veterans and their families find and maintain permanent housing. The VA also assists very low income veterans who are facing imminent loss of their home through the Supportive Services for Veteran Families program. This program provides supportive services grants to private nonprofit organizations and consumer cooperatives that assist very low-income veteran families residing in or transitioning to permanent housing. The organizations receiving grants provide a range of supportive services to eligible veteran families that are designed to promote housing stability. Finally, the Grant and Per Diem Program is offered annually (as funding permits) by the VA to fund community agencies providing services to veterans experiencing homelessness. This program awards grants to community-based organizations to provide transitional housing with wraparound supportive services to assist vulnerable veterans move into permanent housing. The grants are designed to meet veterans at various stages as they move to stable housing.
These efforts have had a dramatic effect: between 2009 and 2019 “veteran homelessness in the United States fell by nearly half – a decline of about 36,000 people who were without housing on any given night.”[5] This decline was the result of policy initiatives like those described above that prioritized increasing veteran housing and providing the necessary wraparound services (e.g., mental health counseling and case management) that assisted this population in obtaining and remaining in housing. The significant decrease in the number of veterans experiencing homelessness during the tenure of these programs is persuasive evidence of the positive effect that well-funded, targeted programs can have.
Another example of the successful devotion of resources to address homelessness issues occurred last year in Westchester County when government officials wanted to remove a homeless encampment under a New York State Thruway overpass in Port Chester. Efforts to forcibly remove individuals experiencing homelessness who are sleeping on public property are likely to increase after last year’s United States Supreme Court decision in City of Grant’s Pass v. Johnson.[6] In that decision, a 6-3 majority ruled that a municipality’s enforcement of an ordinance banning camping on public property against individuals experiencing homelessness does not violate those individuals’ constitutional rights.
Rather than arrive unannounced and simply evict all the inhabitants, which typically just results in further disruption of the inhabitants’ lives and their relocation to another public space, the New York State Thruway Authority, with support from the New York State Police, took a different approach. They offered a substantial window of time in which to relocate the occupants and their possessions. A key stakeholder meeting was set up that included the county’s Department of Community Mental Health and Social Services, the Thruway Authority, state and local police and Search for Change, a nonprofit organization in the Hudson Valley that provides intensive outreach, engagement and care coordination services to individuals experiencing street homelessness and those in temporary shelter settings.
From February through May 2024, agency staff and the nonprofit team planned and worked with the encampment residents to connect them to housing and services. After nearly four months of these groups working together, encampment removal went forward. The remaining occupants were given a date certain for the closure and information on where their remaining possessions would be taken and how to retrieve them. The nonprofit team was present and worked with the occupants to track and retrieve whatever possessions remained that they wanted to store and keep. The fences and the site were posted – not just with “No Trespassing” signs but also signs that told people how to contact the team for assistance if they were homeless and looking to return or seeking help. This successful approach to a homeless encampment can and should be replicated elsewhere, but it requires investment of resources from a variety of stakeholders.
These are just two examples of success in reducing the number of individuals experiencing homelessness and addressing the needs of those individuals and of individuals facing housing insecurity. There are many other examples described in the task force report. Unfortunately, many – if not most – of the programs and initiatives that enjoy success in addressing homelessness receive necessary support in the form of direct or indirect federal funding. While the full extent of upcoming federal budget cuts is uncertain, it is clear that there will be significant cuts to a variety of governmental agencies and programs that provide crucial support.
For example, HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development, which funds housing and other support for individuals experiencing homelessness, is expected to lose 84% of its staff as a result of budget cuts, and the rest of HUD is facing projected staff cuts of 50% as a result of the Department of Government Efficiency initiative.[7] This puts at risk approximately $3.6 billion in pending federal grants to shelters and other homelessness providers including faith-based charities, organizations providing housing for survivors of intimate partner abuse and programs serving veterans in need of housing assistance.[8]
In addition, more than 80,000 jobs, representing more than 17% of the staff – one quarter of whom are veterans themselves – are expected to be cut from the VA that, as noted above, has made significant progress in reducing the number of veterans experiencing homelessness.[9]
In New York State alone, federal budget cuts are expected to result in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses to crucial programs, including more than $300 million in Department of Health funding for a variety organizations across the state, $40 million in funding for the Office of Addiction Services and Supports that backs programs including transitional housing and $27 million in funding for the Office of Mental Health that includes programs designed to allow individuals in need of care to remain in their homes.[10]
According to Deborah L. Worden, the executive director of Action Toward Independence, a nonprofit that provides services to individuals with disabilities in Orange and Sullivan counties, “the cuts to federal funding and restrictions being placed on federal funding threaten the ability of community-based organizations like ours to continue to serve the most vulnerable and historically underserved populations.”
The New York State Bar Association’s task force report contains encouraging examples of programs that work. They not only help address the needs of individuals experiencing homelessness; they also help prevent individuals from losing their homes in the first place and accordingly reduce the societal costs associated with high rates of homelessness. When the task force issued its report earlier this year, the hope was that the policies and programs it recommended could help reverse the upward trend in homelessness. Given the important role of federal support – including serving as the ultimate source of funding for many state programs – the significant cutbacks in federal funding that are underway will make this arduous task even more difficult. But hopefully New York State will find the money to preserve as many of these crucial programs as possible until the federal administration sees fit to provide adequate support for the most vulnerable members of our society.
William T. Russell, Jr. is a partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in the firm’s litigation department and is head of the firm’s bankruptcy and restructuring litigation practice group. He represents financial institutions, private equity sponsors, corporations and other businesses in a wide variety of commercial disputes. He is chair of the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Homelessness and the Law, a member of the New York City Bar Association’s Board of Directors, and a member of the American Law Institute. He has chaired Legal Services NYC’s Board of Directors and served on the Executive Committee of the New York State Bar Association.
Endnotes:
[1] Task Force on Homelessness and the Law, Report and Recommendations of the New York State Bar Association Task Force on Homelessness and the Law, NYSBA (Jan 2025). https://nysba.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/2025-January-Report-and-Recommendations-of-the-Task-Force-on-Homelessness-and-the-Law-FINAL-with-HOD-Amendment-1.21.25.pdf?srsltid=AfmBOopIuZG0Xg08h2yMjDZeowy0J2VgxUNCBf9cMaq7tBK7wcMlxvEN
[2] Annual Homeless Assessment Report, Office of Policy Dev. & Research, Dec. 2023, https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahar/2023-ahar-part-1-pit-estimates-of-homelessness-in-the-us.html.
[3] Annual Homeless Assessment Report, Office of Policy Dev. & Research, Dec. 2024 https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/ahar/2024-ahar-part-1-pit-estimates-of-homelessness-in-the-us.html.
[4] 2021 Report of the Veterans Task Force, Legal Services Corporation (2021), at 4. https://www.lsc.gov/our-impact/publications/other-publications-and-reports/lsc-veterans-task-force-report.
[5] Gregg Cloburn and Clayton Page Aldern, Homelessness Is a Housing Problem: How Structural Factors Explain U.S. Patterns, at note 6, p. 9, (2022).
[6] City of Grant’s Pass v. Johnson, 603 U.S. 520 (2024).
[7] Jennifer Ludden, Trump Administration Plans Mass Firing at Office That Funds Homelessness Program, National Public Radio, Feb. 22, 2025, https://www.npr.org/2025/02/22/g-s1-50199/doge-trump-hud-cuts-homeless-housing-programs; Kriston Capps and Sarah Holder, Shelters Await Billions in Federal Money for Homelessness Providers, Bloomberg, Feb. 25, 2025, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-02-25/homeless-shelters-fear-funding-delays-amid-elon-musk-doge-cuts.
[8] Id.
[9] Stephen Groves, Trump Administration Plans To Cut 80,000 Employees From Veterans Affairs, According to Internal Memo, AP News, March 5, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/veterans-affairs-cuts-doge-musk-trump-f587a6bc3db6a460e9c357592e165712; Jamie Rowen, 5 Reasons Federal Cuts Are Hitting Veterans Especially Hard, PBS, March 16, 2025, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/5-reasons-federal-cuts-are-hitting-veterans-especially-hard.
[10] By the Numbers: Governor Hochul Updates New Yorkers on the Devastating Impact of Federal Cuts on New York State’s Health and Human Service Programs, N.Y.S. Governor, March 28, 2025, https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/numbers-governor-hochul-updates-new-yorkers-devastating-impact-federal-cuts-new-york-states.
