The city is facing about $8.5 million in federal funding cuts for programs that move homeless individuals and families into housing, an unexpected policy change by the Trump administration that could affect 250 to 300 households next year, city manager Yi-An Huang told city councillors Monday. Huang called the move “beyond depressing.”
Councillors contributed their own condemnations of the decision by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. “It’s simply cruel when our president is having Great Gatsby parties at Mar-a-Lago and redoing the bathrooms and building a gilded gold ballroom. It just is crazy,” said councillor Cathie Zusy. Councillor Ayesha Wilson said: “A lot of individuals across our community and the commonwealth and across the nation are definitely going to be suffering deeply.”
HUD announced on Wednesday – the day before the federal government reopened after 43 days of shutdown – that it would change how it awards $4 billion in grants under the Continuum of Care program. The initiative pays for community efforts to bring homeless individuals and families into permanent housing, often with supports. The federal agency ordinarily renews 90 percent of the amount awarded to the city and other grantees year to year “to guarantee stability, which makes sense, because the money is going to housing,” but now will renew only 30 percent, Huang said.
The new policy means the city expects to get $4.6 million less in next year’s Continuum of Care grant, which is currently $6.4 million, Huang said. Also, a HUD emergency rent voucher program that provides affordable housing to once-homeless households will probably lose all its federal funding – a cut of $3.8 million, the city manager said. He said 214 families and individuals in Cambridge now are housed because of Continuum of Care and 129 households have rent vouchers.
Though the timelines for the cuts “are not exact,” the city expects the reductions to occur “in the August to September 2026 time period,” Huang said.
Huang said the city is “still working through different ways to respond” to the expected cuts, including possible legal action, and will collaborate with other communities that have Continuum of Care programs.
The cuts come when the city is coping with an economic downturn that calls for more controls on spending, council and School Committee members were told at a roundtable meeting Nov. 10. When councillors got the bad news a week later about cuts to the programs aimed at homelessness, Huang said a $5 million stabilization fund established to deal with unexpected federal changes wasn’t enough to make up for the reductions, and wouldn’t work anyway because money for housing wasn’t a one-time need. “This will all be part of the FY27 conversation,” Huang said, referring to the city budget for fiscal year 2027.
“What I think is so depressing is that’s just these two programs, and doesn’t get into if there’s further action that we may need to take regarding anything else that is happening,” he said.
Hunger looms
And there is something else that is happening; eligibility for food stamps under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program changed this month. “As of Nov. 1, there’s a whole number of families that have been essentially deemed ineligible for Snap, and they will find out as they go through the recertification process. So a number of immigrants, even ones who are here legally, are now no longer eligible for Snap. And so I think there are going to be continued gaps in the safety net that are getting created by the federal government, and certainly we’re going to have to have a conversation about what are the actions that we can take?” Huang said.
He and councillors praised the emergency action taken by Cambridge and the Cambridge Community Foundation to help thousands of residents cut off from their November food stamp benefits because of the government shutdown and the administration’s decision not to use backup funds established to deal with emergencies.
Massachusetts began loading money onto recipients’ Snap cards despite movement in the courts around ordering the government to pay full benefits. Meanwhile, the shutdown ended and federal officials resumed paying for food stamps.
Food and heat
The city and the foundation established a $500,000 fund – half from the city and half from the foundation – to help food pantries and to distribute $50 grocery cards to families with children in public and charter schools, city-financed day care, and younger children; and older and disabled residents. All recipients had to be getting food stamps.
Huang said the city has distributed more than 1,500 cards through the public schools and 230 to elderly and disabled tenants. Distribution continues this week at the Central Square and North Cambridge senior centers and at affordable housing developments for older and disabled tenants, he said.
Another program affected by the government shutdown – fuel assistance for people who need help paying for heat – was expected to be funded now that the government is operating again, Huang said. But assistant city manager for human services Ellen Semonoff said the program is still operating in emergency mode, providing immediate help only to residents of Cambridge or Somerville running out of fuel or who have no heat.
Others face delays in having their applications processed as a result of the shutdown, according to an announcement on the city’s fuel assistance website.
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“City manager Yi-An Huang told city councillors Monday. Huang called the move beyond depressing.” The city manager could easily make this up by deferring the completely unnecessary redesign of Linear Park ($7M+) and the opening of a fifth entrance to the park on Wesley Avenue. Housing should take priority.
I feel sorry that the city is losing funds here. But, this is why they shouldn’t over spend on things like Linear Park and the fire station.
Update to my comment. The cost of redesigning Linear Park is actually $9.75 M. More than enough to cover the housing shortfall, plus some leftover for a worthy cause.