For people who are housed but live on the brink of homelessness, the government shutdown could be the little shove that knocks them over that brink, as funding through the Department of Housing and Urban Development and others disappears. In Newton, Arkansas, 43 federally subsidized tenants got this notice from their landlord:
“As of Feb. 1, 2019, all tenants will be responsible for full basic rent,” the letter said. “We will extend the due date for the rent to the 20th of the month. This will remain in effect until the government opens up.”
For example, one of the tenants at risk is a 48-year-old woman living on disability and sharing an apartment with her daughter and granddaughter. Her full rent would be $505; she pays $110 with her government subsidy. “This is putting a hurt on all of us. Everything was going along normal until they decided to shut down the government,” she told the New York Times. That federal aid she gets, by the way, is through a program targeting rural poverty, in case you thought housing aid was solely an urban phenomenon.
It’s not just individuals who face an imminent emergency. For the organizations that help people get out of homelessness and stay out, “The crisis has arrived.” That’s true in Montgomery County, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; Kokomo, Indiana; and more. Adrienne Bush, executive director of the Homeless and Housing Coalition of Kentucky, wrote to her state’s senior senator, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, saying the shutdown was “putting people’s lives at risk.”
“I’ll be sure to pass on your concerns,” Tiffany Ge, Mr. McConnell’s legal counsel, replied in an email to Ms. Bush.
Not exactly a comforting expression of real concern there. Meanwhile, America could be about to get a painful reminder of just how much rural areas rely on the government they claim to despise. The suffering will be the same, wherever it’s located.