Mayors Are Trying to Solve the Housing Crisis as Federal Efforts Stall

Mayors across the country are trying to confront the housing crisis with fewer guarantees of federal funding from Washington and mounting pressure to fill the gaps themselves.

Some of the programs they are pushing have been in the works for years, but they have taken on new urgency under the second Trump administration as the president seeks to shrink federal housing assistance going to cities.

“If the federal government is not going to do that, then cities and states have to step up and figure out ways to work together and try to address as much of it as we can, as quickly as we can, as aggressively as we can,” Arunan Arulampalam, the mayor of Hartford, Connecticut, told NOTUS.

“The federal government, which should be completely focused on solving this housing crisis, has seemingly abdicated its responsibility on housing,” said Arulampalam, who is a Democrat and has promoted homeownership initiatives in Hartford that include down payment assistance.

In response to Congress’s inaction on housing policy and the administration’s continued threats to cut funding, mayors in cities such as Hartford, Cleveland and Kansas City, Missouri, are leaning into mortgage assistance programs and partnering with private entities to grow home supply and fulfill housing goals locally.

It’s slow work and not nearly to the scale that could be delivered by the federal government. But many mayors see no alternative at a time when many of their constituents are struggling to buy homes, make rent or even get shelter over their heads.

The U.S. has a shortage of more than 4.7 million single-family homes, according to an analysis by Zillow. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, an organization that advocates for housing solutions, estimates that more than 7 million affordable rental homes are needed for America’s 11 million extremely low-income renter households.

“For the first time in over a generation in America, cities are trying to take on more of these costs,” Quinton Lucas, who is mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, and chairs the Democratic Mayors Association, told NOTUS. He added, however, that there is no local replacement for federal dollars and said “cities won’t be able to address that burden.”

Many are trying to anyway.

Lucas, who experienced homelessness during his youth, said cities must come up with their own resources to keep people housed as the federal government lags behind.

“I became mayor during the first Trump administration. I think the lesson back then was, they’re not coming to save you — they being the federal government,” Lucas said. “That’s why you have us doing the work now that we are in connection with running a Housing Trust Fund.”

The fund he referenced was approved by city voters in 2022, allocating $50 million to housing projects’ development. For Lucas, the fund has taken on a new relevance under the second Trump administration, as he said Republican and Democratic mayors alike are “deeply concerned” about the possibility of cuts to key housing programs. The fund had created nearly 2,500 units as of 2025, and Lucas has set a goal of delivering 10,000 units in total by the end of his term in 2027.

While the trust fund’s budget for next year remains an ongoing conversation, the city is exploring all options to keep financing it.

The city of Cleveland Ohio has also set a goal of adding 2,500 to 3,000 single- and multi-family homes over the next decade. Much of its work is happening in partnership with the Cleveland office of Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a nonprofit. Together they are collaborating on the Cleveland Housing Investment Fund, through which the mayor said they are working toward a $100 million goal to put toward the housing.

To kick start it, “the city gave $18 million of funding” towards the “$100 million goal,” Mayor Justin Bibb told NOTUS.

“I’m really excited about this fund. I think it’s a national model of how cities can work with their foundations and their banking partners to really get more projects shovel ready, to really address the affordable housing crisis at the local level,” said Bibb, a Democrat who co-chairs the bipartisan National Housing Crisis Task Force.

Bibb sounded a warning about potential cuts to federal housing funding streams — especially to the Community Development Block Grant Program, which funds housing development locally. In a budget request to Congress on Friday, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget proposed – for the sixth time – eliminating the block grant program. Bibb said doing so would generate backlash from Republican lawmakers, who also rely on the program to develop housing in their communities.

“In the event that the president decides to cut CDBG dollars, I think he’s going to have a lot of upset members of his own party who want to claw that money back,” Bibb said. “We have to continue to talk about why these dollars are so important for our cities.”

In a statement to NOTUS, the OMB defended its proposal to cut the CDBG program, calling the funding “notoriously wasteful and ridiculous.”

The White House has endorsed the housing package being considered by Congress, which would include several provisions aimed at expanding the ways CDBG funds can be used to build new housing.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers who previously served as mayors told NOTUS that although federal collaboration is key to building homes, mayors are often best positioned to address housing concerns in their cities and that they should actively do so.

“Mayors are obviously on the front line of housing,” Rep. Robert Garcia, a Democrat who served as mayor of Long Beach, California, told NOTUS. “Cities can really help housing production by deregulating or changing zoning, allowing more multiple-type family units … Those are all the local governments.”

But some pointed to the challenges mayors face, namely securing federal funds for construction.

“You’re always trying to try to leverage as much money as you can,” Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Republican who served as mayor of Miami-Dade County until 2020, told NOTUS about city-state-federal collaboration to develop new homes.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Democrat who served as mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, told NOTUS that the city’s trust fund was a good step but that passing federal housing legislation, like the housing package that is currently stalled, to ease red tape is the key to unlocking opportunities for mayors to address the housing crisis.

“There are going to be some changes coming, both on the federal level, but also directed toward the municipal level,” Cleaver said of the housing package.