Affordable Housing Dispatches

by Jo-Ann Johnston

July 2025 reporting from Shelterforce, which covers affordable housing issues nationally, reveals that new ordinances have been created in 260 communities to prohibit sleeping or camping outdoors since July 2024. That is when the United States Supreme Court ruled the city of Grants Pass, Ore., was within its rights in prohibiting overnight camping, parking or sleeping on public property, streets, sidewalks and alleyways. Shelterforce cites the National Homelessness Law Center in Washington, DC, as the source of the statistic. 

In planning to shrink the federal Education Department and restructure budgets, the Trump administration would relieve public school districts of legal requirements to assure that the nation’s estimated 1.4 million homeless students get the same level of services as their peers.  In practical terms, that means attention from counselors to ensure students have the transportation they need to get to school, attend regularly, and receive the school programs they need, according to The Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, DC.  By effectively weakening the federal McKinney-Vento Act and Education for Homeless Children and Youth Program, the Trump administration could put homeless students at risk of dropping out—unless Congress acts to protect the measures—according to the nonprofit organization SchoolHouse Connection, Washington, DC.