At a time when California’s housing crisis is pushing hundreds of thousands into poverty or homelessness, President Donald Trump has proposed a budget that would gut one of the few lifelines available to low-income renters: federal rental assistance.
If enacted, Trump’s 2026 budget proposal would slash funding for critical housing programs—including the Section 8 voucher system and public housing—by 43%.
These cuts would disproportionately harm the very people already struggling the most: low-wage workers, seniors, people with disabilities, and families barely clinging to housing in one of the most expensive states in the country.
Trump’s budget plan brands federal housing programs as “dysfunctional” and offers states more flexibility to redesign them through block grants. But flexibility is not the issue—adequate funding is. California alone is home to more than 560,000 households that rely on some form of federal rental assistance, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
These are not luxury programs; they are survival supports for people living on the margins in an economy that already fails to pay workers enough to keep a roof over their heads.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a full-time minimum-wage worker cannot afford a modest one-bedroom apartment in 94% of U.S. counties. In California, the numbers are even worse.
Working 40 hours a week is no guarantee of housing when rent for a one-bedroom apartment averages well above $2,000 in cities like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego. When the federal government proposes to cut assistance and impose new time limits on aid—just two years for “able-bodied” adults—it is targeting the working poor for failure, punishing people for wages they don’t control.
This proposal isn’t just a financial threat—it’s a moral and policy failure. The Trump administration’s vision shifts responsibility for federal programs to the states, while offering no assurance that those states will have the resources, infrastructure, or political will to maintain services at existing levels. California, despite its progressive leadership, faces its own budget shortfalls. Handing states a block grant and saying “good luck” is not governance—it’s abdication.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner praised the cuts, calling the federal government “bloated” and claiming that the proposal would streamline services. But there is no evidence that streamlining—when paired with massive cuts—results in anything other than lost support and worsening conditions. On the ground, these programs are not faceless bureaucracies. They are the housing vouchers that keep seniors out of shelters, the public housing units that serve as a last refuge for families, and the rental subsidies that allow disabled residents to live independently.
This is not the first time Trump has attempted to undermine housing assistance. During his first term, he repeatedly proposed budget cuts to HUD. Now, with an emboldened base and a party platform shifting further toward austerity for the poor and tax breaks for the rich, the 2026 proposal is more aggressive—and more dangerous.
The idea of turning rental assistance into a single block grant is particularly alarming. As Matt Schwartz, CEO of the California Housing Partnership, explained, Congress is more likely to cut vague grants to states than they are to target a specific, named program that directly serves constituents. In other words, the block grant model makes future defunding even easier.
And the damage would not stop at tenants. Section 8 doesn’t just benefit renters—it supports landlords, property managers, and developers who rely on housing assistance payments to operate affordable units. Gutting the program would destabilize the low-income rental market, jeopardizing public-private partnerships and reducing the incentive to build or maintain affordable housing.
Even some conservative policy voices are wary of the consequences.
Edward Ring, co-founder of the conservative California Policy Center, supports local experimentation with housing policy but admits that slashing aid “in the short run” would hurt people who genuinely need support.
That’s an understatement. In a state where nearly 180,000 people are homeless on any given night, any reduction in rental support is likely to push more residents into shelters, cars, or encampments. Los Angeles alone has seen slight declines in unsheltered homelessness thanks in part to these very programs—the ones Trump now wants to dismantle.
Lourdes Castro Ramirez, head of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles, said it plainly: “These cuts could reverse our progress and further strain local efforts to solve the affordability, housing supply, and homelessness crisis.”
Trump’s rhetoric about “self-sufficiency” is familiar, but profoundly out of touch. In reality, the vast majority of working-age recipients of housing assistance already work, care for children, or live with disabilities. Cutting their lifeline won’t inspire independence—it will ensure desperation.
What’s perhaps most cynical about the proposal is its misdirection. Rather than addressing the real causes of housing unaffordability—wage stagnation, insufficient housing supply, and decades of exclusionary zoning—Trump’s plan blames the victims. Instead of investing in construction, rehabilitation, or vouchers, it imagines that states will somehow fill the gap with no federal backing. It’s a recipe for disaster.
Some members of Congress, including housing advocates on both sides of the aisle, have expressed skepticism toward the proposal. It’s true that presidential budgets are advisory and rarely enacted in full. But as Sonya Acosta of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities warned, nothing should be taken for granted. The GOP-controlled House has already signaled a willingness to cut social programs. Even if the Senate blocks the most extreme elements, some version of these cuts could still find their way into a final budget deal.
Californians must treat this as a five-alarm fire. If Trump’s proposal becomes law, the impact would be swift and devastating. Evictions would rise, shelters would overflow, and thousands would be pushed into homelessness—through no fault of their own. This is not theory. It is a policy proposal with real human consequences, and it demands an equally serious response.
We need to protect and expand, not dismantle, the federal safety net for housing. That means investing in Housing Choice Vouchers, expanding funding for public housing, and preserving programs like HUD-VASH and the Emergency Solutions Grant. It also means rejecting false narratives about “dependence” and recognizing that housing is a basic human need—not a luxury to be rationed.
California already faces one of the worst housing affordability crises in the nation. Trump’s budget would make it worse.
