COLUMBIA — Midlands-area housing providers are trying to navigate chaotic messaging and potential funding cuts from the federal level while working to fill the affordable housing shortage in the region.

The first several months of the second Trump administration have been punctuated by confusion over policy changes and anxiety from potential funding cuts for housing providers and developers. Some fear the turmoil could worsen the area’s affordable housing shortage.

For Columbia Housing, the public housing authority for the Midlands, the threat of any immediate funding cuts has been staved off with Congressional funding expected to last until the end of the fiscal year at the end of September, CEO Barry Hall said.

That funding has remained at last year’s levels, though there are proposals for cuts when the new budget is up in October, he said.

Columbia Housing is the state’s largest affordable housing provider and serves 16,000 to 18,000 people in Richland and Lexington counties through public housing and housing vouchers.

The Columbia Housing authority's offices on Harden Street.

Though the authority has not been in danger of having to roll back any services, officials and agency partners have noticed increased disarray and staffing shortages coming from the federal level.

“That's a concern among everyone, because it's a large safety net that's in place and has been for some time," Hall said, "and with the uncertainty coming out of the administration, how they're going to proceed forward on that, it does create some angst among our partners and ourselves."

The year began with a wide-sweeping memo issued by the White House’s budget office freezing spending from federal loans and grants, leaving thousands of organizations — including Columbia housing providers — scrambling.

That order was rescinded two days later, after initially being blocked by a federal judge.

Trump’s budget proposal includes massive cuts to the Section Eight housing voucher program, which subsidizes rent for low-income families and veterans. Columbia Housing currently provides nearly 4,500 such vouchers.

“We are keeping a daily watchful eye on the White House's recent recommendations for future HUD funding,” Hall said of the potential voucher cuts in a statement. “We don’t want to speculate on what the outcomes of those negotiations will be.”

The administration is also looking to shape local housing practices through policy, pushing to remove protections for transgender individuals from non-discrimination practices.

Columbia Housing has not received any direct guidance regarding the administration’s push to roll back protections for transgender individuals from housing discrimination, Hall said. Any LGBTQ+ individuals are still protected under federal fair housing policies.

‘We would have to bow out of the affordable housing space’

While Columbia Housing’s funding remains secured for now, local nonprofits which develop affordable housing face more uncertainty as the Trump administration looks to dole out sweeping cuts to federal nonprofit funding .

Staff at Columbia-based Homeless No More have been preparing themselves and the families they serve for cuts to grants and personal benefit programs, CEO Lila Anna Sauls said.

“I don't see the state coming in and funding housing and shelter operations in the amount that the federal government has been,” Sauls said. “That's what's worrying us right now, is that we're not hearing we're going to replace it with anything, nor do we have a timeline.”

Homeless No More operates an emergency shelter and transitional housing program for homeless and at-risk families with children. The organization also has over 200 affordable housing units currently in development in Richland and Lexington counties.

The organization has been weaning its shelter and transitional housing programs off of federal funding, planning to ask for more in donations and keeping open positions unfilled.

Staff have been walking residents through just how many of their personal benefits could end in the coming months, from housing vouchers to food stamps.

“So it's also helping our families, not only understand that your benefits are going to get cut by a huge amount, but it's also and there won't be as many people in the community to catch you and take care of you as there were before,” Sauls said.

Even as money is being moved around to keep the shelter and transitional housing programs funded, the organization's affordable housing arm stands to lose the most from funding cutbacks. Rent would have to be increased to keep the nonprofit in the black, she said.

“We would have to bow out of the affordable housing space,” she said.

For now, Sauls isn’t entertaining the idea, instead focusing on ways the nonprofit’s affordable housing projects can become more self-sustaining in the future — possibly by pulling back on the number of units being built.

She hopes for-profit developers who benefit from some of the same tax credits and programs on the chopping block will fight the cuts as well.

“There are some of us who honestly think maybe the chaos will die down at some point,” she said.

When the funding freeze memo came out in January, Hall said he was confident Congress would push back against the wide-sweeping measure. He said he still believed the legislature would restrict detrimental cuts in a May interview.

Sauls said she is not so sure.

“Congress has a chance to push back on that,” she said. “In the past, they have. Nobody knows what it looks like this time around. We don't have a feel for how they're going to react, what they're going to pick as their projects to fight for.”

The organization is looking to minimize its reliance on federal funding as much as possible to prevent similar anxieties in the future, she said.

“We cannot go through what we have gone through the past three months ever again,” she said.

Caleb Bozard covers business, growth and development for the Post & Courier Columbia. He has previously written for The State and the Times and Democrat. He graduated from the University of South Carolina in 2023.