Appeals Court Defends Housing First Myth While Blocking Trump’s Bid to Shift Homelessness Funding

The Trump administration’s effort to steer homelessness funding away from the entrenched “Housing First” approach hit a legal wall this week when a Trump-nominated U.S. District Judge and an appeals court sided against the administration. While the courts ruled the administration’s process violated bureaucratic procedure under the Administrative Procedure Act, the appeals court went further—defending Housing First as an “evidence-based” strategy that “has proven effective.”

This defense of Housing First is not just a legal argument; it’s an ideological dodge that ignores inconvenient realities about the policy’s record and costs.

Housing First prioritizes immediate, permanent housing for homeless individuals without requiring sobriety or participation in treatment programs. This contrasts sharply with the Clinton-era “treatment first” model, which demanded sobriety and self-sufficiency efforts as conditions for housing assistance. Housing First became federal policy in 2013, and HUD enforces it by cutting funding to groups that pursue alternative models like sober living facilities.

Judge Julie Rikelman’s appellate opinion parrots the standard Housing First talking points, citing a 1990s experiment where 88 percent of Housing First participants maintained housing after five years versus 47 percent for treatment first. But she conveniently omits that this study only included homeless people with diagnosed mental illnesses—an unrepresentative group less likely to achieve independence regardless of approach.

The “evidence-based” label for Housing First rests on such selective studies that exclude the vast majority of homeless individuals languishing on waitlists, often assessed by flawed “vulnerability tests.” The result is a misleading picture of success.

National homelessness data tells a starkly different story. Over the past decade, homelessness has surged by 40 percent, even as spending on homelessness programs has skyrocketed. Housing First’s emphasis on permanent subsidies is extremely costly, with cities like San Francisco spending 60 percent of their homelessness budgets just to maintain housing for the formerly homeless few who have already been placed.

While Housing First boasts high retention rates for those housed, its resource intensity means most homeless people never receive help. Treatment first, though it had lower retention percentages, aimed to free more people from dependence on government aid by promoting sobriety and self-sufficiency, arguably producing better outcomes for the broader population.

The Trump administration’s procedural missteps in changing funding criteria are real, but the appeals court’s uncritical embrace of Housing First’s “evidence-based” status is a blind spot that shields an expensive, ineffective approach from scrutiny. The real debate should be about what works for the millions still on the streets — not about protecting ideological orthodoxies dressed up as science.

The courts may have blocked Trump’s move, but the homelessness crisis demands honest reckoning beyond legal formalities and political dogma. It is time to question whether Housing First is truly the solution or just a costly bandage on a growing wound.