‘Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill Act Is a Ticking Time Bomb for Elder Homelessness’

The United States is in the throes of an unprecedented homelessness crisis that is about to be made drastically worse by Donald Trump’s ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’ (OBBBA) signed into law earlier this month, housing campaigners have warned.

Older Americans, including those on low incomes reliant on social safety net programs, are especially vulnerable to becoming homeless once the billions of dollars of cuts laid out in the new legislation come into force.

Researchers were warning of a homelessness cliff edge for seniors even before the new legislation’s cuts, attributable to factors such as the ongoing cost of living crisis hitting those on fixed incomes in retirement hard, as well as soaring rents and a dire lack of affordable or subsidised housing at a time when the population is ageing.

Recent data shows that rents in 2023 were unaffordable for 22.6 million households around the country while one study from Harvard calculated that a third of people over 65 were “cost burdened” due to high rent and utilities bills, putting them at greater risk of later-life homelessness.

According to survey data, over the past two decades, the number of seniors spending more than half their income on housing has doubled from 5.2 million to nearly 11.7 million, putting huge pressure on household budgets.

Homelessness rates in the US hit a record level in 2024 with more than 770,000 people unhoused on a given night (up 18.1% from 2023), according to the most recent government figures.

Homelessness was once rare among older adults but people over 50 are now the fastest growing cohort among the unhoused, with many experiencing homelessness for the first time and the number expected to triple by 2030. 

Against this backdrop, housing advocates contend that the passing of the OBBBA, a 900+ page mega tax and spending law that includes historically high cuts to social safety net programs essential to millions of seniors, constitutes a ticking time bomb for elder homelessness and will exacerbate destitution.

Monica Davalos, senior policy analyst at the California Budget and Policy Center, says older people already struggling to get by will find their problems compounded. “Fundamentally folks just don’t have enough to meet their needs,” she says of the precarity many older Americans face. The OBBBA cuts, including slashing access to government health insurance, will “create even more housing vulnerability,” she concludes.

For many older people, especially those from low-income backgrounds or with a history of poverty, cuts to federally-funded assistance programs will mean they are stretched to breaking point, not only swelling the number of older people who fall into homelessness but with the knock-on effect of overwhelming already strained housing and financial support services, Davalos adds.

People were “falling through the cracks,” even before the new cuts, most of which are due to take effect after the November 2026 mid-term elections.

States, including California, which has battled with addressing an entrenched homeless problem for years and according to most recent data accounts for 24% of the nation’s homeless population, will no doubt try to mitigate some of the fallout triggered by the OBBBA, Davalos says, but the “unprecedented” scale of the federal funding cuts will make it exceptionally difficult.

Jesse Rabinowitz, communications and campaigns director at the National Homelessness Law Center, (NHLC) says the impact of the OBBBA cannot be underestimated.

The Maga budget, just like the Trump administration in general, is catastrophic for people experiencing homelessness and is harmful for most people in this country

Jesse Rabinowitz, National Homelessness Law Center

Rabinowitz says that while there is stiff competition around which aspects of the Act will do damage to average Americans, it is vital to put the spotlight on the repercussions for vulnerable older people as soon as possible. “We are in a new era.”

He warns that the legislation “puts us on a course for disaster” if its impact isn’t mitigated. Coming on top of a rapid upwards homelessness trajectory among the older generation, including a surge in people experiencing it for the first time, the situation is “urgent,” he says.

We have to let folks know that this is their parents and grandparents, who have worked their whole lives to save for retirement are now going to be on the streets for the first time in their lives

Jesse Rabinowitz, National Homelessness Law Center

The OBBBA has been shrouded in controversy from the get-go. The scale of cuts to social programs (and defunding of others plugging the gaps, such as Planned Parenthood) have garnered significant condemnatory attention. So too has the fact that it unleashes a massive transfer of wealth from the average taxpayer to the wealthy, billionaires and corporations in the form of tax cuts and tax breaks.

Throughout its tortuous route through Congress (the final version passed in the Senate by one vote, when the Vice President, JD Vance cast the decider), critics stressed repeatedly that many of its provisions would needlessly harm millions of Americans, especially the poorest and including seniors.

Bernie Sanders, the long-time progressive senator from Vermont, was among the many who slammed the Bill, calling it the “most dangerous piece of legislation in the modern history of our country”. It was, he added, “a gift to the billionaire class, while causing massive pain for low income and working class Americans”. 

The law is on course to add more than $3.4 trillion to the US national debt over the next decade, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, (CBO). When it comes to taxes, one estimate from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center calculates that the richest 0.1% of Americans (those with an annual $5,184,900 or over) will receive an average tax cut of $286,440 in 2026.

Meanwhile the poorest 20% (earning up to $34,600) will see an average tax cut of just $150 – a paltry amount that advocates point out would be far outweighed by the huge cuts to social programmes coming down the line from the legislation.

Of huge concern for housing campaigners are the proposed unparalleled cuts to Medicaid, a government-funded insurance programme that subsidises healthcare and community assistance for more than 70 million Americans, including eligible people on low incomes and disabled people. 

Ten percent of recipients are 65 or over, meaning that when the largest cuts in history to the program come into force seniors, many of whom have chronic health conditions, will find themselves at risk of losing health care.

Medicaid, which is also the biggest funder of long-term care services, is on course to lose one trillion dollars of funding over 10 years meaning around eight million Americans, including large numbers of older adults, will no longer have access.

The potential impact of losing healthcare coverage is alarming. Research shows that when healthcare is stripped away from older people, it can be harmful to health and increase vulnerabilities. One study found that people who have previously lost Medicaid coverage at age 65, were 14% more likely to die within a decade than those who retained their health coverage.

Mia Ives-Rublee, senior director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress (CAP), stresses that when it comes to the OBBBA and Medicaid, the devil is in the detail.

For example, she says, when they are rolled out, the new ‘work requirements’ introduced by the law will constitute fresh “barriers” for older people accessing Medicaid health insurance coverage by requiring applicants to prove they have worked 80 hours a month (or equivalent qualifying community service). This is despite a “high prevalence” of disability and health-related issues among older adults that can prevent many from working.

In addition, Ives Rublee highlights how for older people already experiencing homelessness, many of whom have problems with mobility, disability and often chronic health issues, the OBBBA throws in additional “hurdles” to accessing assistance. 

Subsection (a)(88)(A) of the Act for example, will require Medicaid enrollees to provide mandatory proof of where they live through regular address checks. This is despite the evidence clearly showing that proving residency is especially difficult for people experiencing homelessness due to frequent moves and the absence of a permanent address. 

Vulnerable older single adults reliant on government food assistance also stand to lose out, including those already experiencing homelessness. The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), previously ‘food stamps’ is the largest food insecurity assistance programme in the country. 

Under the new legislation SNAP, which over 42 million Americans access annually, including and an estimated 6.2 million adults over the age of 60, is in line for $186 billion worth of cuts over 10 years – the largest ever –  and could lead to many vulnerable Americans losing access or having their benefits reduced.

Among the changes to SNAP to be rolled out over time is the removal of an exemption to paperwork requirements for homeless individuals applying for food assistance. The current protections are scheduled to ‘sunset’ by 2030. 

Kyle Ross, a policy analyst at CAP, says older, unhoused people are effectively being hit from “multiple directions,” by the new law and SNAP, which wasn’t easy to qualify for in the first place, will now force complicated and burdensome application processes on to people, including homeless seniors, who tend to find navigating the system difficult.

At the NHLC, Rabinowitz stresses the need to take into account moves by the administration beyond the OBBBA that will magnify problems around housing insecurity.

The administration, he points out, “are also talking about drastic cuts to programmes that help people pay rent. They’re talking about drastic cuts to homeless services programmes and programmes that prevent homelessness.”

Despite the scale of the challenges, there are glimmers of hope, Rabinowitz argues. The wider public are waking up to what’s happening with housing and homelessness, including for seniors, he says. “I think we are at a moment in time when people are wise to what’s actually happening.”

He points, for example, to successful state-level challenges to attempts by lawmakers to “criminalise” homelessness in the wake of 2024’s Supreme Court Ruling that 8^th Amendment protections from cruel and unusual punishment did not apply to unhoused people seeking shelter on the streets. He stresses to that polling “consistently’ shows (across party lines) that the public want “housing not handcuffs”.

Despite this, as July was coming to a close President Trump issued yet another sweeping Executive Order, this time reinforcing the Supreme Court ruling by calling for it to be made easier for states and cities to clear people from the streets, including through involuntary commitment for those deemed “to be a risk to themselves or others.” It also seeks to redirect federal funding away from ‘housing first’ approaches to reducing homelessness and calls for funds to be redirected away from harm reduction for people dealing with addictions.

Rabinowitz says there is no choice but to keep fighting against regressive policies, including those that will exacerbate housing insecurity among vulnerable people, including those in the older generation or which try to incarcerate individuals. “We have to figure out how to unite everyone, [even] people who are doing fine, because they don’t want to see their grandparents become homeless,” he says. “This fight is not a Left versus Right battle but a top versus bottom battle.”