Greater Cincinnati's Housing Opportunities Made Equal is among fair housing agencies seeing big cuts under Trump administration efforts to reduce federal spending.
Executive Director Elisabeth Risch says the notice from the federal government that a three-year HUD grant was ending a year early due to cost-cutting by ad-hoc Trump administration unit DOGE came as a surprise and left little time for the agency to adjust.
"We were notified in an email at 8 p.m. on Thursday, February 27, that said 'effective February 27, this grant has been terminated,' " she said. "We have a signed contract for Year Two, which we still have one quarter left in. And then in Year Three, those funds were already obligated, we've been awarded those funds. That's no longer happening."
The roughly $425,000-a-year grant funded investigation into discriminatory rental and mortgage lending practices, one-on-one help for about 350 tenants a year who report being discriminated against, and other services. Risch says the end of the grant has put a halt to some of the agency's core work.
"We just did this big report to show that Black (mortgage) borrowers are denied two times as often as white borrows, even more for higher-income borrowers," she said. "What our termination says is that we can't follow up on that. That's what's been pulled out from under us."
The National Association of Realtors on March 4 reported other fair housing groups suddenly lost similar HUD grants. NAR said the notification regarding those cuts attributed them to Trump advisor Elon Musk's DOGE, an unofficial entity tasked with increasing government efficiency.
Risch said HOME's grant cancellation also cited DOGE. She said the cuts feel "random." Another HUD grant HOME uses for fair housing education and other services didn't get eliminated, for example, even though other agencies lost that grant but got to keep the one HOME lost.
The HUD grant eliminations are part of ongoing cuts at the federal department responsible for housing aid and the enforcement of the 1968 Fair Housing Act, which banned racial and other discrimination in housing.
Trump-appointed Housing Secretary Scott Turner has indicated he's starting a DOGE-inspired task force within HUD to review every dollar the department spends. NPR reported last month that the effort could aim to reduce HUD's staff by half. And the Associated Press reported last month that leaked documents suggest HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity could see staff reduced by as much as 72%.
Risch says HOME is assessing how to move forward after the sudden cancellation of the grant. She says the organization is looking at having to greatly reduce some of its work.
"All of those fair housing services and investigations have been forced to stop," she said.
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