After Richard Hale had his left leg amputated last October, he struggled to find a new place to live that could accommodate a wheelchair and that he could afford.
An Air Force veteran who worked in construction for much of his career, Hale, 64, hasn’t been able to work since he began experiencing vascular issues in the summer of 2023.
And, for years, his housing was precarious: he lived with his brother, who also suffers from chronic health issues, in a mobile home an hour northwest of Portland, Maine. Hale relies on his girlfriend to help him with basic daily activities, but his landlord wouldn’t allow three people to live in their mobile home and demanded he move out.
“I’m just one bill, one emergency situation, away from being food-insecure or housing-insecure,” said Hale, whose income consists only of his monthly $1,675 Social Security disability checks.
Luckily, in March, he was approved for a Housing Choice Voucher through the HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program, and in late April, he moved into an accessible and affordable unit in a 55+ building.
Hale is now one of about 2.3 million US households that rely on housing vouchers. A growing number of voucher holders are older and living on fixed incomes. Tenants with vouchers pay about 30% of their income toward rent, while the US Department of Housing and Urban Development covers the rest, up to what it determines to be fair market rent.
But the future of vouchers is uncertain. President Donald Trump’s budget proposal asks to slash HUD funding by about 44%, with a $26.7 billion cut in funding — a 43% reduction — for rental assistance, which includes vouchers, public housing, and aid for older people and those with disabilities. The proposal, which would need to be approved by Congress, would replace the housing voucher program with block grants and impose two-year limits on rental assistance for healthy adults.
The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Scott Turner, praised the budget proposal in a statement, arguing that federal housing programs have become “too bloated and bureaucratic to efficiently function.”
HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett pointed to a recent statement Turner made, saying that his goal is to “get people off of subsidy, and live a life of self-sustainability,” while supporting those who require assistance.
Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, has previously called for an end to all housing vouchers, arguing the program “brings with it crime, decreased property values, and results in dependency, and subsidized irresponsibility.”
But Hale’s holding out hope that Trump’s cuts in federal spending will translate to bigger Social Security checks for people like him.
“They may find extra money to give everybody on Social Security a boost, because, God knows, you can’t live on a monthly basis on Social Security,” he said.
Trump and Congressional Republicans have not announced any plans to make major increases to Social Security benefits.
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A growing low-income elderly population
There are already far more low-income households than housing vouchers. Only about one in four Americans who are eligible for a voucher receive one. A recent Zillow report found there are almost 17 million more severely rent-burdened households than available vouchers. The average wait time to get the assistance, which is doled out by local public housing authorities, is two and a half years.
The program also faces challenges. A declining number of landlords across the US accept them, and a growing number of voucher recipients can’t find a landlord who will take them. While it’s illegal in some places to discriminate against voucher holders, the practice isn’t outlawed everywhere. And many landlords say the administrative process is simply too slow or burdensome.
But some housing policy experts say vouchers are a particularly effective form of housing assistance. They give low-income people more power to choose the neighborhood, building, and unit they want to live in — and to stay there, creating stability and better work and educational opportunities for themselves and their families.
It offers an alternative to traditional government-owned and operated public housing, which is often underfunded and dilapidated.
With his voucher, Hale will pay $493 per month in rent for an accessible one-bedroom apartment in a brand new 55+ subsidized housing development not far from him in Westbrook, Maine. That leaves him just over $1,000 a month for all his other expenses. So, despite ongoing health issues, he also hopes to start working part-time as soon as he can.
“I’ve always been one of those people that believes when one door closes, another one opens, eventually,” he said.
Robin Spear, 62, hasn’t had an easy time living in public housing in Oklahoma City. But after a year of experiencing homelessness, she was desperate for any home she could get.
“I’m grateful for the roof over my head, I’m not complaining about that at all,” Spear told BI. But she doesn’t feel safe in her building, which she says suffers from deferred maintenance issues and disrespectful neighbors. “My daughter won’t let my grandkids even come over here.”
Courtesy of Robin Spear
The search for affordable senior housing isn’t over for Tracey Lee, 67, It became increasingly clear to her that she needed to find subsidized housing as her landlord repeatedly raised the rent on her one-bedroom apartment in Long Beach, California, in recent years. Lee had to stop working last year when she began suffering from kidney failure and went on dialysis.
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Lee says she relies chiefly on her Social Security checks, after spending much of her retirement nest egg on medical care.
“The bills are exceeding what I get monthly,” Lee said. “It’s a month-by-month situation.”
Luckily, she was recently approved for a subsidized apartment in a senior building in Long Beach and is supposed to move in about six months. Her new rent will be just a third of her income. In the meantime, Lee hopes to go back to work and is looking for a full-time remote job in healthcare customer service, mortgage lending, or counseling — all industries she’s previously worked in.
