Last month, Trump and HUD Secretary Ben Carson proposed increasing rents for the very poorest families and seniors in subsidized housing. Their proposal would impact over 4 million people and triple rents for over 700,000 families struggling to keep a roof over their families' heads.

The hypocrisy is appalling. Trump and Carson say they need to spend less money on people who need it to pay for the massive tax cuts they just passed - cuts that benefit the very wealthiest and corporations. After giving the richest 1% an average tax cut of more than $50,000 this year alone, the Trump administration now wants to hike rents on needy families by $780 on average.

But even that isn’t the whole story.  This is all part and parcel of their war on the poor and on people of color.  While the majority of people receiving housing assistance in this country are white, the legacy and current reality of our structurally racist housing market means people of color are disproportionately hurt when programs are cut.  

We need a radical rethinking of housing in this country - we need to fully fund HUD to meet the actual needs, prioritize the preservation, expansion and maintenance of public housing nationwide and we have to get the corporate profit model out of federal housing policy to make housing policy about people, not profits.