When President Trump set out last month to eviscerate a tiny agency that coordinates federal efforts to reduce homelessness, he was not just clearing bureaucratic brush.
He was escalating a conservative war on how billions in federal aid gets spent, a fight that could have life-altering stakes for the record number of people sleeping on the streets.
The obscure focus of Mr. Trump’s ire, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, is smaller than many Boy Scout troops. His larger target appears to be the policy that dominates homelessness work, an approach called Housing First.
Once the product of bipartisan consensus, Housing First programs, which the council promotes, provide apartments to chronically homeless people without requiring them to accept services like drug treatment or mental health care. Supporters say the policy saves lives by getting treatment-wary people safely indoors, where some go on to accept services. Proponents have credited it for a signature success, the decline by more than half in the number of homeless veterans.
But critics say the approach has become a stifling orthodoxy that has failed to stem the broader rise in homelessness and may abet it. Giving people long-term housing without addressing underlying problems like substance abuse or mental illness leaves them prone to homelessness again, opponents of the policy say. Detractors also say that by favoring Housing First, federal grants unfairly exclude groups like rescue missions that emphasize sobriety.
The sooner the council vanishes, critics say, the faster Mr. Trump can steer a new course.
“It’s an ideological and propagandist arm for failed Housing First policies,” said Devon Kurtz, a policy analyst at the conservative Cicero Institute, an Austin-based research and advocacy group. “It would have been undercutting the work of the Trump administration right off the bat.”