Housing for All

A proposed Core Issue plank for TIP. Last updated October 1, 2026. Dollar amounts, rates and dates are marked TBA until they are scored.

The short version

A home is the starting point, not the prize.

They tell you about the time. They don't tell you about the years after it.

Nobody should have to earn a home by surviving the street. We will make housing the starting point: a permanent, safe place to live for anyone who needs one, with treatment and support available and funded, never forced. We will end the practice of arresting and fining people for being poor, unhoused, or asleep, because a criminal record has never been the key to an apartment. Rent will never be more than you can afford: a set share of your income, and nothing if you have none. And we will pay for it by asking the largest corporations and the highest earners to carry their share, not by taking it from the people who can least afford it. We will build the homes, because a shortage cannot be fixed by leaving it to the market, and no one will be released from prison to a shelter bed or a bus stop. A rebuilt HUD will run it, and its promises will be written into law so no future administration can quietly take them back.

What HUD is doing now

The federal government is moving money and rules away from permanent housing and toward shelters, transitional housing, time limits and enforcement. Courts have blocked parts of it, mostly on procedure, and the fight is still live.

Executive Order 14321 (July 24, 2025). Directs HUD and HHS to end support for Housing First, condition federal housing on treatment participation where feasible, favor jurisdictions that enforce camping, loitering and squatting bans, and push civil commitment. It sets the direction for everything below. Civil-rights and disability-rights groups have criticized it.
Continuum of Care funding, 2025 version. Capped permanent supportive housing at 30% of federal homelessness funding. Judge Mary McElroy blocked it. Street Sense reported a projection that it would push about 170,000 people out of supportive housing.
Continuum of Care funding, 2026 version (June 1, 2026). Protected only 60% of funding for renewals, down from nearly 90% previously, and set aside $1.3 billion for transitional housing and supportive services. A court set it aside on August 7, 2026 for skipping public notice-and-comment. An appeals court let HUD proceed temporarily on September 16. Projected to affect about 97,000 people.
FY2027 budget request. Asks $73.5 billion for HUD, about 5% below FY2026's $77.3 billion. Bars new vouchers except HUD-VASH and Family Unification. Would shift homelessness grants toward shelters and transitional housing and zero out HOME and CDBG. It is a request, not law. Congress decides.
Time limits and work requirements. A proposal would impose a 2-year limit on rental assistance for households without seniors or disabled members and block-grant five rental programs to states. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates 3.3 million people, including 1.7 million children, would lose assistance if it applied today. About 2 million of them live in households with a worker.
March 4, 2026 rules. Removed the 30-day eviction notice requirement for public housing and moved to let housing agencies impose work requirements and term limits.
Citizenship and mixed-status rules. On January 26, 2026, HUD ordered agencies to verify citizenship for about 200,000 tenants. In February 2026 it proposed barring mixed-status families, which would affect about 25,000 households, roughly 80,000 people, about 37,000 of them children, nearly all U.S. citizens.
Emergency Housing Vouchers. The pandemic-era program housed about 60,000 households. HUD estimated its funding would run out in 2026.

What the latest count shows. HUD's 2025 report counted 745,652 people homeless on a single night, down 3.4% from 2024. Family homelessness fell 11.2%, but chronic homelessness hit a record 155,750. HUD's Secretary says Housing First has failed. The National Low Income Housing Coalition notes the decline was driven by families, and nothing in the report shows what caused it.

What is driving rents (and what isn't)

Mostly a shortage of homes and the high cost of building them. Big investors are a real factor in some places but a small one nationally. What renters feel most is incomes not keeping up.

Shortage of homes (largest driver). Federal Reserve Governor Michael Barr (September 23, 2026) puts the shortfall at roughly 2 million to 5.5 million units depending on the method, about 1% to 4% of the housing stock. Local zoning, permitting and building codes limit how much gets built.
Cost of building (large). Barr says construction productivity hasn't grown since 1987, more than 30% of construction workers left after the last crash, and new single-family home prices rose about 40% from 2020 to 2025. Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies also names high construction costs.
Incomes not keeping up (what renters feel). From 2001 to 2024 real renter incomes rose 9% while rents rose 30%. A record 22.7 million renters (49%) are cost-burdened, and 12.1 million (26%) spend over half their income on housing. Rents are up about 34% since December 2019 (Barr).
Higher interest rates (moderate). Mortgage rates are high compared with before the pandemic, and Barr says home affordability hit its lowest level in 21 years in July 2026. That keeps more households renting.
Large investors buying single-family homes (real locally, small nationally). About 3% of single-family rentals nationally. Much higher in some metros: Atlanta 25%, Jacksonville 21%, Charlotte 18% (Urban Institute). In six metros the Government Accountability Office studied, they owned under 1% to 3% of all single-family homes. Research is mixed: Freddie Mac calls them "at most, a very modest contributor" to price growth, and one study cited by Brookings found rents fell modestly after they entered.
Algorithmic rent pricing (RealPage). The Justice Department alleged the software let landlords coordinate prices. A proposed settlement (November 2025) bars use of real-time data, with no damages and no admission of wrongdoing. Ten states kept their own case going. We have not seen a reliable estimate of its effect on rents.

Supply works. Asking rents fell 0.6% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2025 as new apartments arrived (488,000 multifamily units completed in 2025), according to Harvard's report. That is the best evidence for putting building first.

What we have not reviewed. TIP has not yet gathered evidence on private-equity ownership of apartment buildings and makes no claim about it here.

What the evidence says

Housing works, and it saves money. Denver's randomized supportive-housing program kept 77% of participants stably housed after 3 years, cut arrests 40% and ER visits 40%, and offset 75% to 94% of the city's costs through avoided jail and emergency care. Program cost was about $12,000 to $15,500 per person per year.
Finland did it. Since launching Housing First in 2008, Finland cut overall homelessness about 30% and long-term homelessness about 35%, turning shelters into homes with on-site support. Reported savings: up to 15,000 euros a year per formerly homeless person. But single homelessness there has risen again in 2024 and 2025, after cuts to housing and income support.
But Housing First is not a cure-all. Critics, including the Heritage Foundation, point to research finding high housing retention (about 80%) with little change in substance use or employment. That matches what housing can and can't do: it ends homelessness, and treatment is a separate service that has to be funded.
Criminalizing doesn't fix it. In Grants Pass v. Johnson (June 2024) the Supreme Court held camping bans don't violate the Eighth Amendment, so the Constitution no longer stops them. More than 100 U.S. cities passed camping bans in 2024 alone. Advocates argue fines and records make it harder to get housing and work. The study evidence on arrests is thinner than those advocacy claims.

The plan: stops on the itinerary

Why statute matters. Much of HUD's rollback has come through funding notices, rules and guidance, not new laws, which is why courts have been ruling on procedure. This plank rebuilds HUD and writes its core promises into statute, with mandatory trust-fund financing, so the next administration can't undo them with a rule change.

Every stop has a fixed destination and a flexible route. Costs and dates are TBA until scored.

Stop 1: Housing First, restored

The destination. Permanent housing is offered first to everyone who is homeless, with no sobriety or treatment precondition. Treatment and mental-health care are funded and available on site.
The route (flexible). Mix of rapid re-housing and supportive housing; service model; pace of rollout.
Who pays. Redirect emergency, jail and ER spending. Outside estimate for the first step: $9.6 billion a year (National Alliance to End Homelessness).
Target date. TBA.

Stop 2: End the criminalization of homelessness

The destination. No arrests, fines or jail for sleeping, sitting or sheltering outdoors, or for status-based vagrancy and loitering offenses, when no adequate housing is available. Homelessness is never grounds for forced confinement or forced treatment. Crimes stay crimes. Federal funds never depend on enforcing camping bans.
The route (flexible). Federal statute, grant conditions, a right to sue, with a phase-in for states. Attorney review of the legal design is pending.
Who pays. Saves enforcement costs. Funds outreach and services instead.
Target date. TBA.

Stop 3: Keep people housed

The destination. Rent is never more than a set share of income (working figure: 30%), and people with no income pay nothing. No case-management, treatment or work conditions to stay housed. No time limits. Existing vouchers are protected.
The route (flexible). The exact income share, and how fast vouchers reach every eligible household (outside estimate: $62 billion a year, Urban Institute).
Who pays. A corporate housing levy and an income-based housing contribution (see "How to pay for it").
Target date. TBA.

Stop 4: Housing after prison

The destination. No one is released to a shelter bed or the street. Every person leaving prison or jail has a housing plan starting months before release, and a permanent place to live with rent based on income. A federally run, fully funded bridge house covers the first weeks: medical care, reintegration services and 2KUSA sign-up. It is a bridge, never the destination. Housing applications may not ban people over an old record: individual review only, with the shortest workable look-back period.
The route (flexible). Length of the bridge stay; the pace of phasing out contractors; how the bridge works for people going to family; which prisons and jails go first; whether reentry homes are dedicated units or part of the general stock.
Who pays. The same housing trust fund. Pre-release planning is paid by the corrections system that holds the person. Savings from lower re-arrest and shelter use are likely but unscored. Attorney review pending.
Target date. TBA.

Stop 5: A rebuilt HUD, with a protected program office

The destination. HUD is rebuilt with a new mandate and its staffing restored to the pre-2025 level (about 8,800 employees, versus about 5,800 now). A protected program office confirms income, runs rental assistance and manages the housing trust fund. It may verify income and housing quality but may not add conditions. The core promises (rent share, no time limits, no work requirements, no forced treatment because someone is homeless) are written into law.
The route (flexible). Board and term protections, subject to what current law allows; how the office works with local housing authorities and nonprofits; a cap on administrative costs. HUD's other functions stay.
Who pays. Day one: withdraw the time-limit, work-requirement and mixed-status rules and restore Housing First guidance, by executive action and subject to legal process. Then legislation to lock it in. Rehiring about 3,000 positions; cost TBA.
Target date. TBA.

Stop 6: Build the homes

The destination. Public and permanently affordable homes are built at the scale of the need. Every person has a home they can afford.
The route (flexible). Number of homes, public versus limited-profit model, timeline. For scale: Rep. Ilhan Omar's Homes for All Act is 12 million homes for $1 trillion over 10 years.
Who pays. A dedicated housing trust fund fed by the corporate levy and an income-based contribution, collected through the existing tax system and managed by HUD's protected program office.
Target date. TBA.

Stop 7: The Corps builds homes

The destination. The AOC Climate and Tourism Corps builds and retrofits homes as a core mission, working alongside licensed tradespeople: new public and permanently affordable homes, rehab of vacant buildings, weatherization, and training members for trades apprenticeships. Homes stay permanently affordable.
The route (flexible). Mix of new building, factory-built assembly and rehab; the size of the Corps; pay; how much of the home target the Corps supplies.
Who pays. Housing build costs come from the housing trust fund, not from 2KUSA or the Corps' own budget, to avoid counting the same money twice. Cost TBA.
Target date. TBA.

Stop 8: Keep Wall Street from crowding out families

The destination. Enforce the 2026 law barring large investors from buying single-family homes, and close loopholes.
The route (flexible). Whether to extend limits to existing holdings or add a surcharge on vacant corporate-owned units. The evidence says this helps locally, not nationally, so it is a guardrail, not the main fix.
Who pays. No cost; possible surcharge revenue.
Target date. TBA.

What Habitat for Humanity and YouthBuild teach us

A Corps that builds homes is a strong idea, but the evidence says to be careful about how.

Habitat shows the appetite, not the scale. Habitat reports over 70,000 new homes built and more than 100,000 repaired, with over 2 million volunteers a year. If the 70,000 is U.S.-only since 1976, that averages roughly 1,400 new homes a year by simple division, against a shortage of 2 million to 5.5 million. A Corps would have to operate at a wholly different scale.
Volunteer building is getting harder. Rising costs are pushing Habitat chapters toward factory-built homes. One chapter saved at least $80 a square foot, with volunteers doing less of the construction. A Corps should assemble factory-built homes and do site work and rehab, not only hand-build.
Training programs produce workers more than homes. HUD's evaluation of YouthBuild (participants from 1996 to 2002, so old data) found about $15,000 spent per participant, a median of 8 housing units per grant over 18 to 30 months, and 36% of participants employed afterward. It works as training, weakly as a housing factory.
Where the Corps adds the most. The construction workforce shrank (Barr says more than 30% of workers left after the last crash), so a paid trades pipeline helps directly. Pair the Corps with licensed trades, apprenticeships, rehab of vacant buildings and weatherization, and build for the housing trust fund.

How we build

The destination is fixed: close the shortage with public and permanently affordable homes, and don't leave it to the market. The route, the number of homes and the timeline are flexible (TBA). Here is what the cost evidence says.

The gap. 2 million to 5.5 million homes short, depending on the method (Barr, September 2026). Closing it over 10 years would mean roughly 200,000 to 550,000 additional homes a year on top of what is already being built (simple division, an illustration and not a TIP commitment).
What we build now for lower-income families. The Low Income Housing Tax Credit supports about 107,000 units a year at about $8 billion to $9.9 billion a year, and about 3.13 million units since 1986 (Tax Foundation). Critics note it costs more per unit than other approaches. The main U.S. tool is about one-fifth to one-half of the yearly need, and it runs on private investors.
Federal bill for scale. Rep. Omar's Homes for All Act: 12 million homes for $1 trillion over 10 years, about $83,000 a home on average (simple division). That probably understates the full cost of each home, since it is federal money only.
The expensive end. San Diego's affordable-housing costs averaged $586,525 a unit in 2023 (city-commissioned cost study). A high-cost city, but it shows how much the cost per home matters. The cost per home, not the number of homes, is what swings the bill.
Preserve what exists. About 488,000 federally assisted units were at risk of leaving affordable status within five years (National Housing Preservation Database, 2017 data). Preserving existing homes was estimated at $4.8 billion over 50 years, against $6.4 billion to replace them (PAHRC). Keeping an affordable home is cheaper than replacing it.
Convert empty offices. A pipeline of about 90,300 office-to-residential units, but only about 24% of offices studied are feasible to convert (CRE Daily). Helps in some downtowns. Not a national fix.
Factory-built. Savings from modular building are modest except for manufactured homes (Construction Physics). Worth doing for speed and labor, but not for big savings.
Vienna, the working example. About 220,000 city-owned and 200,000 limited-profit homes, housing roughly half of the city's residents. Proof a public and limited-profit system can run for a century.

The methods, in order of speed and cost

1. Preserve first. Fund the purchase and repair of at-risk affordable buildings before they convert to market rate. It is the cheapest home you can add.
2. Publicly owned and limited-profit builders. Borrow the Vienna idea: public and nonprofit developers build on cost, with low-interest loans from the housing trust fund, and rents set by income. This is the main engine for the gap. Repealing the Faircloth Amendment removes the federal cap on new public housing, as Rep. Omar's bill proposes.
3. Public land. Put federal, state and local surplus land to housing use first.
4. Permitting and zoning reform. The ROAD to Housing Act, passed in June 2026, includes supply and permitting reforms. Tie federal grants to building approvals.
5. Factory-built and rehab. Use factory-built assembly for speed, and rehab of vacant buildings and conversions where they pencil out.
6. The Corps and the trades. The Corps supplies the labor and the pipeline into the trades, and works under licensed tradespeople.
7. Fix the tax credit. Keep the LIHTC working as one tool, but look at its cost per unit and investor returns. A fuller review is needed before TIP says how.

Kept flexible. Fixed: the shortage is closed with public and permanently affordable homes. Flexible and marked TBA: the number of homes, the timeline, and the mix of methods. The dollar cost depends almost entirely on the cost per home, so TIP will publish a range, not a single number, until it is scored.

Housing after prison

A shelter bed is the worst default. A halfway house, rebuilt as a funded bridge, is the right first stop: medical care, reintegration services and sign-up for the 2KUSA dividend, all in one place. But it is a bridge, not a home. The destination is a permanent place to live with income-based rent, arranged before release, with the same 2KUSA dividend as every other American, felony record or not.

What the evidence shows

Release to a shelter bed: reject as a plan. About 600,000 people leave prison each year. Formerly incarcerated people are almost 10 times more likely to be homeless than the general public (Prison Policy Initiative, using 2008 survey data). The Prison Policy Initiative reports about 52,000 people left correctional facilities in 2017 directly into shelters. HUD's 2024 proposed rule cites the same roughly 10-times figure. A shelter is an emergency, not a release plan.
Traditional halfway house (federal residential reentry center): rebuild it as the bridge. The Government Accountability Office (2026) found 21,190 of 29,934 people reviewed (71%) did not have earned time applied toward halfway-house or home-confinement placement, and the Bureau of Prisons lacks the capacity for everyone eligible. About 65,000 late payments to contractors from fiscal 2022 to March 2025, with about 70% of payments late in fiscal 2023 and 2024, made some houses reluctant to bid. The fix: medical care, reintegration services and 2KUSA sign-up on site; a short stay with a permanent home lined up for the exit; supervision rules that belong to the sentence, not to housing assistance; and operators paid on time.
Supportive housing for people leaving prison: the best evidence for the destination. The Urban Institute's evaluation of Returning Home-Ohio (a quasi-experimental study, not a randomized one) found participants had significantly lower re-arrest and reincarceration within a year than a comparison group and got more substance-abuse and mental-health services. A New York City study found 256 fewer shelter days over 10 years. This fits the plank: permanent housing first, with voluntary services.
Family or friends. Common in practice. Some public and subsidized housing rules can make it hard for a person with a record to be added to a household. TIP's position: a family must not lose housing for taking someone home. Legal review of the rules is pending.

What the plank says

A housing plan before release. Corrections and the housing agency start planning months before release. Nobody is released into homelessness.
Permanent housing with income-based rent. Same rent rule as everyone else: a set share of income, and nothing if there is none. Services such as treatment, job help and counseling are offered and voluntary.
A bridge house, not a waiting room. Bridge houses are publicly run, and private contractors are phased out. The federal government runs them for federal releases and sets national standards. States must match federal funding to run them for state and local releases (match rate TBA). The bridge gives people medical care (including continuing any treatment started inside), reintegration services such as ID, benefits, job and family help, and 2KUSA sign-up, with a permanent home lined up for the day they leave. Stays are short, and no one is put out without a place to go. Services are offered, not forced. Court-ordered supervision is separate from housing assistance, and this plank does not waive it.
2KUSA starts the day they leave prison. No dividend is paid while a person is incarcerated. Sign-up and paperwork are completed before release, and payments begin the day the person leaves prison, including when they go straight into a bridge house, and continue for people on probation or parole. The bridge house may not take the dividend as a fee. The reason is practical: a person with no cash and no plan, dropped into a city, is under pressure to do anything for money, even something minor like shoplifting. Amounts and start dates are TBA.
The dividend is protected. The 2KUSA law will bar any state or local agency, court or private creditor from garnishing, levying, offsetting or assigning it. The only claims allowed are capped shares for court-ordered restitution and child support, paid through one federal channel (percentages TBA). The legal drafting is under attorney review.
Ban-the-box for housing. In April 2024 HUD proposed a rule requiring individual review before denying assisted housing over a record. It presumes convictions older than 3 years should not be considered, bars denials based only on an arrest, and allows 15 days to correct the record. Only lifetime sex-offender registration and methamphetamine production on federally assisted property are federally required exclusions. A rebuilt HUD would finish it.
Tie it to Prison Conversion. TIP's plan to close private prisons would send people home. The housing has to be ready before those doors open.
Immigration. Immigration consequences follow federal immigration law. TIP's amnesty rules are set out in its immigration plank.

How to pay for it

TIP's existing revenue layers are already committed to the 2KUSA dividend and Medicare for All, so housing needs its own source. Counting the same dollars twice would be the first thing a critic finds. None of the rates below are scored yet.

Money already being spent. Emergency rooms, jail stays, shelters and policing of homelessness. Denver offset 75% to 94% of its costs, and Finland reports up to 15,000 euros a year saved per person. Real, but it doesn't cover the whole bill.
Corporate housing levy. A dedicated levy on the largest corporations, paid into a housing trust fund. Rate and revenue need formal scoring. Design matters: a badly designed levy can be passed on to customers or workers.
Surcharge on large corporate landlords. A charge on vacant or excess units held by the biggest corporate owners. Unscored. Pairs with the 2026 investor-purchase ban.
Income-based housing contribution. A progressive contribution on income that rises with income, collected through the existing tax system and paid into the housing trust fund that HUD's protected program office manages. Rate and brackets need scoring, with an exemption threshold so low- and middle-income households are not hit.
Income-based rent. Residents pay a set share of income (working figure 30%, the standard U.S. public-housing rule). People with no income pay nothing. It recovers part of operating costs. HUD's program office confirms income, using tax records where possible, with no case management or compliance conditions.
Payroll contribution (the Vienna model). A small shared employer and employee contribution dedicated to housing. Vienna funds its housing partly this way, plus low-interest loans. It is broad-based, so workers pay too.
Scale of the need (outside estimates, not TIP's numbers). $9.6 billion a year for Housing First for everyone who used shelters in 2022 (about 1.05 million households; federal Housing First funding is about $5.4 billion now). $62 billion a year for universal vouchers. About $100 billion a year for the Homes for All Act. These come from the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the Urban Institute via the Terner Center, and the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

A note on 2KUSA. Cash helps renters, but it doesn't build homes. Economists generally warn that adding money to a market with too few homes can raise rents. That is why the build stop matters and why the two planks go together.

How other countries did it

No country has ended homelessness. The lowest rates in OECD data (Norway, Korea, Finland, Croatia, Greece and Japan, all under 3 per 10,000 people) come with very different definitions, and Japan counts only people sleeping in public spaces. Here is what the best performers did, and where success has slipped.

Finland. National Housing First program since 2008. Shelters turned into homes with on-site support, no sobriety precondition, about 250 million euros invested. Overall homelessness is down about 30% and long-term homelessness about 35%, with reported savings up to 15,000 euros a year per person. It has slipped: single homelessness rose in 2024 and again in 2025 (4,579 people, up 20%; long-term 1,306, up 29%). The Y-Foundation warned that cuts to housing and livelihoods make ending homelessness harder.
Japan. A 2002 law funded shelters and counseling, and a welfare system pays rent and living costs (about 2 million recipients by 2025). The official count was 2,591 in January 2025, down 90% from 25,296 in 2003. The count covers only people in public spaces. Net-cafe residents, people in cars and people on friends' couches aren't counted.
Scotland. Abolished the priority-need test in 2012, so every unintentionally homeless household is legally entitled to settled housing, with limits on unsuitable temporary accommodation. A legal right to housing, enforceable by the household. TIP has not verified outcome figures for Scotland.
Vienna, Austria. Roughly half of residents live in social housing: about 220,000 city-owned and 200,000 limited-profit homes, paid for by payroll contributions and low-interest loans. Affordable housing for a broad range of incomes, not only the poorest. TIP's sources gave no homelessness figures for Vienna.
Medicine Hat, Canada (a city). Housing First since 2009, with data-driven coordination among agencies. 1,323 people housed through 2021; the first Canadian city to reach functional zero chronic homelessness (June 2021); shelter use down 64%. Functional zero is narrow: three or fewer chronically homeless people for three months in a row.
Bergen County, New Jersey (a county). A by-name list of everyone homeless, a one-stop service center, and Housing First priority for the most vulnerable. Functional zero for chronic homelessness in 2016 and veterans in 2017. Total homelessness stayed around 271 to 352 people a year in 2019 to 2021.

What the best examples have in common

Housing comes first, with services offered alongside. Finland, Medicine Hat and Bergen County all put people into homes before asking anything else of them.
Rent is supported by income. Japan's welfare system and Vienna's subsidized housing both keep rent within reach, which is the thinking behind the income-based rent in this plank.
There is a legal right or a named owner. Scotland made housing a legal entitlement, and the functional-zero cities tracked every person by name.
It slips if you stop funding it. Finland's recent rise shows that cutting housing and income support undoes progress. That is why the funding here is dedicated, not annual.
Measure honestly. Japan's low count and "functional zero" both look better than the full picture. This plank reports total homelessness, not only the narrow numbers.
In the U.S. "Housing for All" bills already exist: a Housing for All Act of 2022 (S.3788) and Rep. Ilhan Omar's Homes for All Act, which would build 8.5 million public housing units and 3.5 million permanently affordable homes and repeal the Faircloth Amendment's cap on new public housing. The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act passed Congress in late June 2026 with large bipartisan majorities. Press reports say it includes supply and permitting reforms and bars large investors (reported threshold: owners of 350 or more homes) from buying more single-family homes.

Hard questions

"Housing First doesn't treat addiction." True that housing alone doesn't. The plank funds voluntary treatment on site but doesn't make it a precondition, because the critics' own figures show housing retention drops when it is (about 40% versus 80%).
"Ending camping enforcement is unsafe." The plank ends punishing people for being unhoused. It doesn't touch assault, theft or dealing, which remain crimes, and it pairs the change with real shelter and housing offers.
"What about people too ill to accept help?" Homelessness is never grounds for forced confinement or forced treatment. TIP opposes civil commitment as homelessness policy, including the version the executive order pushes. Existing emergency holds for people in imminent danger stay, with the hearing, time limits and legal counsel the law already requires. Help is offered, funded and voluntary, through outreach workers and on-site services. Critics argue some people are too ill to accept help and will stay on the street. Our answer is to make help worth accepting: a home first, with services that ask for nothing in return.
"Corporate taxes get passed on." Sometimes, depending on design. The plank commits to a scored, dedicated levy and to publishing the scoring.
"Won't vouchers just raise rents?" Without new supply, they can. That is why vouchers are a bridge and building is a fixed destination.
"Doesn't the dividend reward people with records over their victims?" Court-ordered restitution can be paid from a capped share of the dividend, so victims are not left behind.

Still to be set (TBA)

The number of homes and the timeline. The corporate levy and income-based contribution rates and brackets. The share of income for rent. The state match rate for bridge houses. The caps for restitution and child support. Dividend amounts and start dates. How income is verified. TIP will publish the scoring when it exists.

Sources

HUD: 2025 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report release (hud.gov/news/hud-no-26-037); National Low Income Housing Coalition summary of the 2025 AHAR (nlihc.org)
Bipartisan Policy Center: President Trump's Executive Order on Homelessness (bipartisanpolicy.org)
NACo: Court vacates FY 2026 Continuum of Care grant changes (naco.org); Street Sense Media on the judge blocking HUD's shift away from permanent housing (streetsensemedia.org)
NLIHC: FY27 budget request and HUD cuts; Emergency Housing Voucher funding (nlihc.org)
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Rental assistance time limits (cbpp.org)
Stateline: HUD mixed-status proposed rule (stateline.org); Multifamily Dive: 2026 housing policy summary (multifamilydive.com)
National Alliance to End Homelessness: cost of Housing First for all shelter households (endhomelessness.org)
Terner Center: Universal vouchers (ternercenter.berkeley.edu); NLIHC: Homes for All Act (nlihc.org)
NLIHC: Denver supportive housing trial results (nlihc.org); thisisFINLAND: Finland's Housing First model (finland.fi); NPR: Vienna's social housing (npr.org)
Finland: VARKE homelessness statistics 2025 (varke.fi); Y-Foundation on homelessness decreasing, then rising (ysaatio.fi)
Japan: Cronkite News on Japan's hidden homeless (cronkitenews.azpbs.org); OECD Affordable Housing Database, population experiencing homelessness (oecd.org)
Scotland: gov.scot summary of current homelessness legislation; Medicine Hat: Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness (caeh.ca); Bergen County: Next City (nextcity.org)
HUD staffing: Federal News Network (federalnewsnetwork.com) and Shelterforce (shelterforce.org), September 2026
Habitat for Humanity: 40 facts about Habitat and housing (habitat.org); WFAE on Habitat chapters pivoting to factory-built homes (wfae.org); HUD USER evaluation of YouthBuild (huduser.gov)
Rents and supply: Harvard JCHS, America's Rental Housing 2026 (jchs.harvard.edu); Federal Reserve Governor Barr speech, September 23, 2026 (federalreserve.gov)
Investors: GAO report on institutional ownership of single-family rentals (gao.gov); Brookings on banning institutional purchases (brookings.edu); Urban Institute on regulating large investors (urban.org); NPR on the RealPage settlement (npr.org)
How we build: Tax Foundation on the LIHTC (taxfoundation.org); Construction Physics on prefab savings; CRE Daily on office conversions; San Diego affordable housing cost study; NLIHC/NHPD at-risk units (nlihc.org); socialhousing.wien on Vienna
Reentry: Prison Policy Initiative, Nowhere to Go and Housing First and reentry (prisonpolicy.org); GAO-26-107353 on halfway houses (gao.gov); Urban Institute, Returning Home-Ohio (urban.org); Federal Register, Reducing Barriers to HUD-Assisted Housing, April 10, 2024 (federalregister.gov)
Heritage Foundation: The Housing First approach has failed (heritage.org); American Bar Association on Grants Pass (americanbar.org); OPB: 100+ cities banned camping after Grants Pass (opb.org)