4 GROUNDCOVER NEWS HOMELESSNESS AUGUST 8, 2025 Federal cuts to housing vouchers could lead to more homelessness in Washtenaw County Everybody I know has, needs, or wants a housing voucher because rent is too damn high! Here in Washtenaw County, officials await the effects from the July bill that will cut funding to Federal Housing Choice Vouchers (Section 8), jeopardizing those who have vouchers now, and leaving thousands unhoused in Washtenaw County. A 43% cut to voucher programs funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development would equate to a more than a $12 million loss for the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, Jennifer Hall, the commission’s executive director told Washtenaw County officials during a Wednesday, July 2, working session, as reported by MLive.* The housing commission estimated it would have to terminate 916 vouchers. “I want to make sure you’re aware of that, because it will be a major increase in homelessness if that is what happens, and it is going to affect all of your jurisdictions, particularly the urban core, City of Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti city, Ypsilanti Township, Superior Township,” Hall is reported to have said. “And we’re only one housing agency in our county; there are others that have vouchers here,” she added. The housing commission expects to get direction from HUD now that the federal cuts for fiscal year 2026, also known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” have been signed into law by President Trump. When Hall was interviewed by the Ann Arbor News/MLive, she said she is monitoring news from various professional organizations on the subject. According to the Associated Press, more than 1 million low-income households — most of them working families with children — who depend on the nation’s public housing and Section 8 voucher programs could be at risk of losing their government-subsidized homes under the Trump administration’s proposal to impose a two-year time limit on rental assistance. (In other words, people receiving voucher-based assistance would only be allowed to stay in the housing for two years.) That over-one-million figure is according to new research from New York University, obtained exclusively by The Associated Press, which suggests the time restriction could affect as many as 1.4 million households. The NYU report also raises concerns about the largely untested policy, as most of the limited number of local housing authorities that have voluntarily tried the idea eventually abandoned the pilots. “If currently assisted MIKE JONES Groundcover vendor No. 113 households are subject to a two-year limit, that would lead to enormous disruption and large administrative costs” for public housing authorities, the report said, adding that once the limit was up, housing authorities “would have to evict all of these households and identify new households to replace them.” Elderly and disabled people would be exempt, but there’s little guidance from the agency on how time-limited housing assistance would be implemented — how it would be enforced, when the clock starts and how the exemptions would be defined. There is also a wide range of classifications of competency within the category of “disabled.” Will this result in expensive and time-consuming efforts to prove acceptable levels of disability for housing assistance? There are eight million Americans who are one paycheck away from becoming homeless. Since 2020, Washtenaw County has seen an overall increase in homelessness of almost 20%. The Point-in-Time Count is a federally mandated accounting of homelessness organized by the Washtenaw Housing Alliance and the Office of Community and Economic Development. As discussed in previous articles in Groundcover News, the PIT count is a necessary, but incomplete attempt to understand the size of homelessness in a county. Literal counts of unsheltered and sheltered homelessness must be extrapolated to get a more realistic number. A 2023 review conducted by the Wash-tenaw County Continuum of Care indicated that 266 individuals were experiencing homelessness, a 15% rise since 2022. The 2024 Point in Time Count identified 330 people experiencing homelessness, a 24% increase from the previous year. In just the last year Michigan’s eviction rate has also risen nearly 5%. The Shelter Association of Washtenaw County was established in 1982, and is the primary provider of services and emergency shelter for over 1300 Washtenaw County individuals each year. SAWC operates out of the Robert J. Delonis Center in downtown Ann Arbor. SAWC works with a diverse range of people struggling with homelessness, including first-time homeless people, veterans, domestic violence survivors, and people battling substance abuse and/or mental health issues. Services are offered through their core programs: Residential, Non-Residential/Shelter Diversion, Pathways Program, Recuperative Care, Rotating Shelter, Housing Crisis Stabilization, and Winter Programs. At the Delonis Center, SAWC has an onsite kitchen run by Food Gatherers and a free medical clinic run by Packard Health. SAWC offers hope to those living on the street with a myriad of services designed to give people the dignity they deserve including showers, access to storage, laundry, and an address to receive mail. Their programs and services address immediate and long-term client needs through case management, community referrals, and on-site basic needs with the goal of sustainable housing. Their Residential Program offers beds to 58 individuals. Their Shelter Diversion program can assist an additional 100 individuals at a time. Their Recuperative Care program offers 12 beds at a time for individuals experiencing homelessness discharging from local hospitals with an ongoing medical need. In the cold months, the SAWC serves an additional 500 to 750 people in their cold-weather warming center and offers survival and warmth from the coldest winter months. The Delonis warming center clients, along with all the other clients, receive an array of support that helps them move into safe, permanent housing. The end goal is ending homelessness, one person at a time, and to work with the community to allocate the necessary resources to provide housing and support based on the Housing First Model. The Delonis Center will also, separately, be affected by federal funding cuts. They could lose $700,000 from their $4 million budget, potentially reducing much-needed services for the unhoused in Washtenaw County. As a cab driver in 2017, I was unhoused and received my Section 8 voucher. The reason I received a voucher is because I was court-ordered to pay child support and could not afford to pay rent and child support at the same time. Now, I and millions of other low-income tenants are wondering whether or not we are going to lose our housing voucher. And those who are on the waiting list for permanent housing from the federal housing program will be left chronically homeless. To be considered chronically homeless, one has to be unhoused for one year or more, but the truth is, it often takes several years to receive a federal housing voucher. The two year limitation on federal housing vouchers for rental assistance, in my opinion and experience with different housing agencies, will be an administrative disaster. These housing agencies are too small, under-staffed, and in some cases incompetent to handle a turnover every two years. When people suffer in poverty, they usually don’t escape poverty in as little time as two years. And the expense and disruption of relocating will further stress financial resources. The two year limitation could mean that those with Section 8 housing vouchers become unhoused again, thus increasing the number of unhoused people in Washtenaw County. *The budget that passed in the House of Representatives was more hopeful than the President's initial FY26 proposed budget, but still implements work requirements and large admin cuts.
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