A Northeast Ohio nonprofit which investigates fair housing violations may have to shut its doors before the end of the year after losing nearly all of its federal funding.
The Fair Housing Resource Center investigates cases of housing discrimination and offers an array of housing support services in Ashtabula, Geauga, Lake and Trumbull counties. The organization lost about 90% of its funding due to cuts at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development at the direction of the Department of Government Efficiency, Executive Director Patricia Kidd said. The organization had to lay off 75% of its staff, leaving three people running day to day operations, she said.
“Just because the funding has been cut, the volume of phone calls have not decreased at all," she said.
Kidd received the letter from HUD notifying her of the termination of the nonprofit's major grant Feb. 27, effective that day.
"It was like a punch in the stomach," she said.
The letter cites Executive Order 14158, which established and implemented DOGE, and states that the grant to investigate fair housing complaints "no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities."
"The decision by DOGE doesn't necessarily maximize efficiency," Kidd said. "Honestly, it just increases suffering."
Eliminating funding for investigating housing discrimination will put more of a strain on government funded social services, she said.
"The idea of cutting enforcement funding to improve efficiency for the federal government just completely defies logic," Kidd said, "because when discriminatory housing practices go unchecked, it creates more instability, it creates more evictions, it creates more homelessness."
These HUD cuts come as homelessness is on the rise in Ohio and across the country. Since 2020, Ohio's homeless population has grown 10%, while nationally the homeless population grew by 33%, according to the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio.
Kidd doesn't know why their grant was terminated, she said. More than 70 HUD grants across the country were terminated at the same time without explanation, she said.
The Fair Housing Resource Center is trying to continue investigating cases of housing discrimination, but services like landlord tenant mediation to stop evictions have been cut for the majority of their service area, Kidd said. Only Lake County is still receiving eviction mediation services, as it's the only county that buys into the program, she said.
Without a reinstatement of this HUD funding, the Fair Housing Resource Center will be forced to shutdown within six months, she said. Additionally, the organization is still waiting for HUD to reimburse it for expenses paid before the funding was terminated, she said.
Lawsuits have been filed to stop the HUD cuts, but President Donald Trump’s proposed budget includes more drastic cuts for HUD, which would shut down the Fair Housing Resource Center and others like it across the country, leaving cases of housing discrimination uninvestigated, Kidd said.
“Victims of housing discrimination would still have legal rights, but enforcing those rights would now be much harder," she said. "And folks would need to be handling those completely on their own. They wouldn’t have anybody to investigate those.”
