The National Housing Law Project And Tenant Union Federation: Tenants Demand Action While Trump Caters To Billionaires

WASHINGTON, D.C.—The National Housing Law Project executive director Shamus Roller and Tenant Union Federation director Tara Raghuveer today released the following statement ahead of Trump’s planned address on affordability at the World Economic Forum in Davos:

“With no sense of irony, tomorrow Trump will make a speech about housing affordability while surrounded by his billionaire friends. The backdrop makes clear who benefits from his policies, leaving behind the vast majority of Americans who are struggling to make their rent or mortgage.

“Trump said he’d ease housing costs, but his past actions guaranteed the opposite: eviction and homelessness. This proposal is pulled out of the corporate landlord playbook. It will focus on markets, not people, and how they will make more profit instead of keeping us housed. It will have many promises, few details, and zero follow-through. Poor and working people demand real and immediate action that matches the scale of this crisis.”

Below are previous actions and other proposals by the Trump administration that have or will worsen the housing crisis by hiking prices or dismantling the programs that keep poor and working people housed:

• The administration attempted to gut and defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) leaving consumers across the country vulnerable to predatory action by the real estate industry, private equity, and corporate landlords.
• Due to the administration’s ongoing violence against immigrants, some landlords are calling ICE on tenants, leading to homelessness, self-eviction, and family separation. 
• The administration’s appointee to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) dismissed entire teams focused on sustainability, affordability, and accessibility, and eliminated incentives to serve lower-income borrowers and underserved communities.
• The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) plans to destroy hallmark federal housing programs and policy.
  • Trump’s executive order on homelessness legalizes the displacement, criminalization, and institutionalization of homeless people. 
  • The administration’s attack on Continuum of Care funding put hundreds of thousands of people at risk of homelessness. 
  • The administration took away fair housing protections through massive staff cuts at the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity and eliminated the Fair Housing Act’s disparate impact rule. 
  • The administration plans to take away housing from millions of people who exceed strict time limits or don’t meet harsh work requirements, in addition to kicking tens of thousands of immigrant families out of HUD housing. HUD also threatened to revoke funding for housing authorities who protect immigrant families. 
  • The administration plans to let landlords who do business with the government and housing authorities more easily evict the country’s poorest tenants with little to no notice.
• The administration’s tariffs and import taxes on construction materials are making it more expensive to build housing, as is the deportation of badly needed construction workers.