Workers at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development are bracing for deep staffing cuts in divisions that provide housing assistance, investigate discrimination, and compile market data and research.
In all, around 50% of HUD employees are expected to lose their jobs amid President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s broad efforts to reduce the size of the federal government, said Antonio Gaines, president of AFGE Council 222, which represents HUD workers. Employees at the Federal Housing Administration, the office responsible for insuring mortgage loans, don’t appear to be affected, he said.
But the cuts will exceed 50% in other divisions. Offices that police housing and employment discrimination are expected to be reduced by 75%, Gaines said. Other departments that face the deepest reductions include the Office of Policy Development and Research, which maintains troves of data about the US housing market, and the Office of Community Planning and Development, which offers affordable housing programs and homelessness assistance and provides disaster recovery.
“We expect more cuts to come,” Gaines said, saying he was worried about how the cuts and buyouts could affect services like housing vouchers and grants to rural hospitals. “It’s pretty devastating. There could be huge disruptions in services to American citizens.”
The Trump administration is laying off hundreds of thousands of government workers in an effort to vastly shrink and reshape the federal government. Tens of thousands of government workers also opted into a deferred resignation program.
