We will soon see more tents and encampments popping up throughout Maine. In a continuation of massive cuts to programs helping people living in poverty, the current Administration has announced a huge change to how it will fund housing and homeless services. This new approach will decimate permanent supportive housing programs and will lead to — at a minimum — hundreds of people in Maine and over 170,000 people across the country returning to homelessness or experiencing unsheltered homelessness for the first time.  

Together with the recent executive orders to arrest or institutionalize unhoused people, this new approach will lead to a human rights crisis for thousands of Americans and impact all our communities. 

Federal funds for public housing assistance and programs for people experiencing homelessness come through the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grants. The changes announced: 

• Reduce access to permanent housing at the exact moment that rent, evictions, and unsheltered homelessness are increasing. 

• Undermine harm reduction, despite overwhelming evidence that low-barrier engagement is essential for housing stabilization. 

• Reward policing and punitive responses, including encampment sweeps — strategies that consistently increase trauma and prolong homelessness. 

• Elevate Transitional Housing, which is more expensive than current funded programs and has poorer long-term outcomes, particularly for Black, Latino, LGBTQ+, and disabled residents. 

• Force programs to ignore best practices and proven solutions in favor of implementing treatment-first policies to receive essential funding. 

If they do not, more than 1,200 Mainers – including people with disabilities, chronic illness, and families with children, all who have overcome homelessness – will no longer have a place to call home and will be forced back out on our streets.