Local housing initiatives impacted by shutdown
Last week, Mountain Projects’ Amanda Singletary was convinced she’d be calling all 250 Section 8 landlords with bad news: they wouldn’t be receiving October’s rental payment.
Because Section 8 received funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, but HUD hadn’t indicated what might become of its finances given a federal government shutdown, Singletary was “sweating bullets” as the Oct. 1 deadline to extend a continuing resolution to keep the federal government open loomed over the horizon.
Singletary ended up learning of the agency’s plans through a third-party organization.
“I happened to be one of many thousands of people who signed up for a Zoom meeting, and they were the ones who were who relayed that information,” she recounted.
HUD eventually uploaded its contingency plan, ostensibly on Sept. 29, but Singletary questioned why the agency didn’t spread the word immediately after publishing the document.
As it turned out, she didn’t have to call a single landlord. HUD would honor all funding already obligated, including Section 8 payments through the end of October. According to the Mountain Projects employee, November’s funding also seemed accounted for, though she has no idea what will happen if the shutdown advances into December. By then, it won’t just be rental funding on the chopping block. It’ll be overhead, too — meaning Singletary’s salary.
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While she feels relief for having temporarily avoided the worst possible outcome, the current situation at the federal agency is still dire.
“It’s a skeleton crew that’s running HUD,” she said.
Prior to the shutdown, its workforce was just over 6,000 — a massive decrease from the nearly 8,000 it boasted in 2024, before President Trump’s DOGE cuts.
Now, staff count hovers at around 1,350, 965 of whom are intermittent and 244 of whom are full-time. That’s nearly identical to HUD staffing cuts proposed by the Biden Administration’s 2023 contingency plan, with a major exception: this year, the Office of Management and Budget has directed agencies to threaten furloughed employees with termination.
Meanwhile, employees are carrying out federal termination — or Reduction in Force — processes. If Congress fails to prevent a full-scale funding lapse, the Trump Administration will exempt employees conducting RIFs from the shutdown. Traditionally, the “exempt” category has been reserved for federal workers protecting life or property or those delivering statutorily mandated benefits — and does not include employees tasked with departmental layoffs.
At its current staffing level, Singletary said HUD can only deal with what it deems “life threatening emergencies or catastrophic emergencies,” which isn’t in line with what on-the-ground organizations tend to need.
Typically, contacts at field offices will provide policy-related information when agencies have questions or need clarification.
“So, if for some reason, [HUD] didn’t bring the [other employees] back, and this is what we were left with, we would be in a lot of trouble,” she said.
Even now, Singletary feels the staffing shortage acutely due to Mountain Projects’ shortfall status. An agency will experience shortfall if obligated funding does not cover rental prices, and it consequently must stop issuing Section 8 housing vouchers. There are over 500 families on the Mountain Projects waitlist, which was closed upon reaching maximum capacity in October of 2024.
Mountain Projects is supposed to be communicating regularly with HUD’s shortfall prevention team and applying for set-aside funding. These processes are complicated by the shutdown.
“Because everyone is furloughed right now, literally last week, when I emailed probably a dozen of my HUD contacts, all of their emails bounced back,” Singletary said.
Singletary predicted the nonprofit would exit shortfall in the coming months, but she can’t know with certainty until HUD provides a direct timeline.
She explained that “even if we get ourselves out of shortfall, and the government is still shut down, we can’t do anything. We can’t administer vouchers until HUD gives us the all clear.”
Plus, after administering vouchers, Mountain Projects must return to HUD for approval.
“I mean, the federal government is notorious for being slow anyway. Now, add on that they’re short staffed. What maybe would have taken [HUD] six weeks … may take 12 weeks,” she said.
Finally, Singletary aptly analogized how local Section 8 work felt.
“We’re floating, at this point. We’re floating around, spreading water.”
