WASHINGTON, May 14 (UPI) -- Bipartisan members of the House and Senate Appropriations subcommittees warned this week that President Donald Trump's proposed $10.7 billion in cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development's fiscal 2027 budget would significantly worsen the homelessness crisis.
During subcommittee hearings Tuesday and Thursday, Republican and Democratic members of Congress grilled HUD Secretary Scott Turner about the immediate impact of the proposed budget's sweeping cuts.
Democrats criticized proposed reductions to programs that support long-term housing solutions, which activists estimated could force up to 170,000 people onto the street. Republicans decried hundreds of millions of dollars worth of proposed cuts to Native American housing programs.
The bipartisan pushback showed the opposition in Congress to the president's housing proposals, after legislators rejected even deeper cuts a year earlier.
One of the week's most intense exchanges between Turner and lawmakers came on Thursday when Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., questioned him about the delay in HUD's point-in-time count and housing inventory count report. The report, typically issued annually, compiles the number of people around the country who were experiencing homelessness on a given night in January.
