White House "Skinny" Budget Request and HUD: Cut or Block Grant Rental Assistance Programs, Eliminate Others
(May 4, 2025) The White House on May 2nd delivered a “skinny” budget request to Congress to describe how the Trump administration would like Congress to fund programs in fiscal year (FY) 2026, which begins Oct. 1st.
The skinny budget request, which is devoid of details to fully understand its reasoning and impact, asks Congress to block grant the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) rental assistance programs to states and provide them with 42 percent less funding to run these programs compared to FY 2025. Programs that would be included in this block grant are Project-Based Rental Assistance, Section 202 Housing for the Elderly, Tenant-Based Rental Assistance, Public Housing, and Section 811 Housing for Persons with Disabilities.
In the request, the White House seeks a $26.718 billion decrease in FY 2026, providing $36.3 billion to states to run these programs, a 42 percent cut to the $63.5 billion HUD has to run these programs in FY 2025.
In LeadingAge’s analysis, the budget’s proposals would, if adopted, ruin and undermine almost 100 years of federal rental assistance programs. LeadingAge is not swayed by the proposal’s language indicating efforts to “ensure a majority of rental assistance funding through States would go to the elderly and disabled” and strongly opposes efforts to block grant HUD’s rental assistance programs and cut their funding so drastically. HUD’s rental assistance programs serve more than 9 million people, some of whom are older adults, but others who work in aging services or may one day need aging services, have children who will work in aging services, or otherwise work and support the many stakeholders who make aging services the high-quality programs that they are.
In addition to its request to decimate HUD’s rental assistance programs, the White House asks Congress to eliminate all funding for the HOME program, the Community Development Block Grant program, and the Fair Housing Initiatives Program, and to cut homeless assistance funding.
Overall, the White House’s request seeks to cut 22.6 percent of all nondefense discretionary funding across the federal government.
A full, detailed FY 2026 request is expected in the second half of May from the White House. U.S. House and Senate committees will have HUD Secretary Scott Turner testify about his FY 2026 HUD request over the coming weeks, depending on the timing of the transmission of the White House’s detailed request to Congress.
Watch for a LeadingAge action alert on HUD funding coming soon, and read more from LeadingAge in this article.
Contact: Annalyse Komoroske Denio, akomoroskedenio@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8866