Even as drastic budget cuts hit across the agency, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is boosting investment in one area: housing assistance for former foster youth.
What’s uncertain is how much that new funding could be offset by the broader cuts.
HUD this month announced a $1.8 million investment in its Foster Youth to Independence Program, an initiative that gives housing vouchers to people transitioning out of foster care. The White House has billed the program — and foster services more generally — as a priority for first lady Melania Trump. The president’s “skinny” budget proposal included $25 million in new funding for foster youth, despite an overall 43% cut to HUD’s funding.
The new FYI money is in addition to the program’s baseline funding. While the increase is smaller than the department has awarded the program in previous years, it’s still a clear contrast to the cuts elsewhere at HUD.
“I think there’s a lot of smoke and mirrors going on, with the announcement of this investment, but in the background (HUD) is doing all these other things that people aren’t aware of … like the community development awards that are on the chopping block,” Sarah Hunter, director of the RAND Center for Housing and Homelessness, told NOTUS.
A HUD spokesperson said in a statement to NOTUS that the idea HUD is hiding behind a smokescreen is “laughable.”
“This program has been going on since the first Trump administration as it was started under then HUD Secretary Ben Carson,” the spokesperson said. “Those who make this claim are more concerned with politicizing a conversation than learning the facts and origin of a successful program.”
HUD Secretary Scott Turner has been a proponent of lowering HUD’s budget, saying in his confirmation hearing he wanted to prioritize finding savings. In the emailed statement, the spokesperson said the latest round of funding “underscores the commitment from the administration to support proven programs to assist child welfare.”
Across the country, there are nearly 370,000 children living in foster care, according to 2023 data from the Department of Health and Human Services. Foster youth aging out of the system qualify for housing choice vouchers for up to 36 months under HUD’s Family Unification Program, created by Congress in 1990.
Trump revamped the program during his first administration by creating FYI, which made housing vouchers available on a rolling basis and added supportive services for enrollees for the duration of the program.
In California, one of nearly a dozen states chosen for the award, the new funding went to the communities with the largest number of transitioning foster youth: Marin, Orange and Los Angeles counties. Los Angeles has one of the largest foster care systems in the country, combined with the state’s tight rental market and low vacancy rate.
The compounding barriers to housing have left California with an outsized need for housing assistance, according to the California Policy Lab. More than 1,000 former foster children age out of the system each year, and 7% of them end up experiencing homelessness or housing instability.
“It’s the kind of a concept that has gotten a lot of support, bipartisan support, because there’s this very specific population that can be helped and there’s this very specific case why that assistance is needed,” Andy Winkler, director of housing and infrastructure projects at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told NOTUS.
Becks Heyhoe-Khalil, executive director of United to End Homelessness at Orange County United Way, told NOTUS the groups most at risk during this period of transition at HUD are public housing authorities.
“Our public housing authorities are responsible for some of the most vulnerable people in our community, and our foster youth make up a significant portion of that population. So, with the recommended changes to policy at the federal level for public housing authority structures and functions, I think it does leave them in this place of uncertainty,” Heyhoe-Khalil said.
California increased its number of housing vouchers through the Family Unification Program by 54% between 2021 and 2023, according to a study by John Burton Advocates for Youth.
While tackling broader housing issues may be more complicated, continued investment and attention can lead to long-term solutions for former foster youth, Thomas Lee, chief executive officer at California-based nonprofit First Place for Youth, told NOTUS.
“There are about 25,000 to 50,000 youth that would benefit from foster care support and housing vouchers,” Lee said. “I feel like that is a small enough number to tackle and solve the problem. There are so few problems you can solve in a lifetime, and this is one I feel is actually solvable.”
Amelia Benavides-Colón is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow. This story was produced as part of a partnership between NOTUS and San José Spotlight.
