Trump wants to cut rental assistance. His first-term budget requests show he’s serious

The Trump administration released an outline of its 2026 federal budget proposal on Friday, and it calls for steep cuts to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The cuts total $32.9 billion, and they include the elimination of three programs in their entirety. The document — compiled by Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — is not a line-item budget request, but it signals even deeper cuts than those proposed during President Donald Trump’s first term.

The most dramatic is a $26.7 billion cut to a combination of rental assistance programs — including Section 8 housing vouchers — public housing, and housing assistance for the elderly and disabled.

It also proposes the elimination of popular Community Development Block Grants (CDBGs), the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, Pathways to Removing Obstacles (PRO) Housing and Native Hawaiian Block Grants. Five other programs or grants are subject to consolidation or substantial funding cuts.

Experts on the federal budget are hardly surprised. During Trump’s first term, he requested the elimination of CDBG, HOME, the Public-Housing Capital Fund, Self-Sufficiency Programs and Native Hawaiian Block Grants, among other substantial cuts.

But the enacted budgets in each year of Trump’s first term not only preserved these and other programs, but in many cases increased funding.

The presidential budget request opens the negotiating process with Congress on any given fiscal year’s budget. The House and the Senate have to approve it, and then it goes to the president’s desk for signature.

Because Trump’s budget proposals included such massive cuts, the enacted budgets during his first term bore little resemblance to his original requests.

That’s because some of the proposed cuts are politically unpalatable. CDBGs are used by practically every jurisdiction in the U.S., and they can be used for a wide variety of projects. Trump’s previous attempts to eliminate the program were not seriously entertained by Congress.

In an interview last week with HousingWire, David Dworkin, the president and CEO of the National Housing Conference, said he expects a similar response to Trump’s proposal for 2026.

“The good news is that the housing budget is likely dead on arrival,” Dworkin said. “The depth of the cuts would create both a massive homelessness crisis and a real estate crisis where owners of apartment buildings that rely on Housing Choice Vouchers would be going bankrupt at a breathtaking pace.”

The numbers and language in the outlined proposal are vague and ambiguous. In some cases, it’s hard to flesh out exactly what the line-item budget request will look like — particularly for cuts to rental assistance and public housing.

According to Vought, they’re part of an effort to transform “dysfunctional rental assistance programs into a state-based formula grant.” He claims this would incentivize states and the private sector to provide affordable housing. He notes that the budget includes $25 million in housing grants for youth aging out of foster care.

The elimination of HUD’s Self-Sufficiency Programs is similarly intended to pass the buck to state and local governments. The Surplus Lead Hazard Reduction and Healthy Homes programs would have their funding paused until current reserves are depleted.

Some of the proposed cuts, which have limited details, are attempts to consolidate funding between two similar programs housed in separate agencies. For example, while Trump wants to eliminate HUD grants for Native Hawaiians, he wants to fold the same grants into an unspecified program that also serves this group.