Along with mayors from across the country, Binghamton Mayor Jared Kraham has voiced concern over the Trump administration’s proposed cuts to federal housing programs and their potential impacts on local communities.

On May 2, the administration released its discretionary budget request for the next fiscal year, which proposes a 44 percent funding cut to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The budget calls for about $26.7 billion in cuts to a state rental assistance block grant while imposing a “two-year cap on rental assistance for able bodied adults.”

The proposal suggests eliminating two programs that provide state and local funding for economic development and housing construction: the Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnerships.

The United States Conference of Mayors, consisting of over 1,400 mayors across the United States, released a statement opposing the proposed cuts.

“American cities have overcome incredible obstacles in recent years and reemerged stronger, safer, and more vibrant,” wrote Andrew Ginther, the conference’s president and the mayor of Columbus, Ohio, on May 2. “The budget released today would undermine all of that progress. These excessive and punitive cuts to critical programs threaten public safety, local economies, the health of the people in our communities, and the very federal-local partnership that has made American cities so dynamic.”

Community Development Block Grants provide funding to over 1,200 state and local governments to support “community development activities to build stronger and more resilient communities,” per the program website. HOME investment partnerships help fund affordable housing creation at the state and local levels. Kraham said the city of Binghamton would lose roughly $2.3 million from program cuts.

Kraham told Pipe Dream that these programs fund critical projects like paving roads in low-income neighborhoods, code enforcement and nonprofit programs helping vulnerable populations like youth and seniors.

“Just later this year, we’ll be breaking ground on a project that was supported through HOME funding that is building dozens of units of affordable housing in the First Ward,” Kraham said.

In the budget proposal, the Trump administration said the block grant program is “poorly targeted” and used for projects that should be directly funded by state and local governments. The administration added that the federal government is not well positioned to address housing supply issues.

“The Federal Government’s involvement increases the regulatory burden of producing affordable housing,” the proposal read. “State and local governments are better positioned to address comprehensively the array of unique market challenges, local policies, and impediments that lead to housing affordability problems.”

Kraham said residents should be concerned about the impact of these funding cuts on programs like after-school youth initiatives and VINES, which provides healthy food assistance for low-income families.

A similar set of budget cuts was proposed during Trump’s first term but was rejected by Congress, Kraham added.

“Housing is the bedrock of a thriving community and a central tenet of the American Dream,” the conference’s statement read. “It is our collective responsibility to ensure that dream lives on, and the nation’s mayors demand the administration and Congress uphold their responsibility to be good partners in strengthening opportunities for people in American cities. We urge Congress to continue funding these critical bipartisan programs.”