Local experts say Trump’s new bill will affect low-income and Black communities the most.
A sweeping round of cuts to housing programs that are wrapped into Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” could be catastrophic to neighborhoods throughout the city, officials said this week.
“This is extremely dire, and we don’t want people thrown in the streets like trash,” Jamal Turner, vice chair of the Baltimore City Continuum of Care, told The Baltimore Banner. “They are putting people into garbage bags, and putting them out into the streets.”
The bill includes deep cuts to support programs that help distressed communities and people at risk of becoming unhoused. It also ratchets up criteria to qualify for those programs, including time limits on who can qualify for vouchers and new work requirements.
The cuts would also disproportionately hurt Black communities, Nico Sanders, chair of Continuum of Care, reportedly said at an event hosted by the paper. Sanders said that may push mortality rates higher, as more residents lose their places to live.
The cuts could mean Baltimoreans becoming homeless may flood the city’s already-overwhelmed hospital ERs, which already function as default emergency shelters for children, seniors and others with no place else to go.
“That is apocalyptic level,” said Terry Hickey, director of the Baltimore County Department of Housing and Community Development.
The bill has passed out of the Senate and is now attempting passage in the House.
“Prepare for total destruction and despair,” Sanders said.
