In Louisville, organizations that help people move off the streets are preparing to change what kind of housing they provide.
St. John Center, St. Vincent de Paul Louisville and Family Health Centers-Phoenix Health Care for the Homeless are considering converting some permanent supportive housing into temporary, transitional housing. At St. John Center, the change could affect 120 apartments.
In Corbin, another change has already happened.
Volunteers of America Mid-States spent 18 months developing a permanent supportive housing project with Eastern Kentucky University and other partners. The project would have included childcare and access to college classes.
It is no longer moving forward.
“That project is now dead,” CEO Jennifer Hancock told the Associated Press.
These decisions are not being driven simply by a sudden change in what Kentucky homelessness providers believe works.
Federal funding rules have changed.
And that makes what is happening in Kentucky useful for understanding a larger Pattern of Power: what to look for when government makes hardship part of the way a policy works.
What changed
For more than a decade, federal homelessness policy has emphasized an approach commonly called Housing First.
The basic premise is straightforward: give someone a stable place to live without first requiring sobriety, employment, or treatment completion. Services remain available, but permanent housing is not conditioned on successfully completing them.
Permanent supportive housing generally combines long-term rental assistance with access to services for people who often have serious disabilities, mental illness, substance-use disorders, or chronic health problems.
Research has consistently found that Housing First programs keep people housed, although findings on health and other outcomes are more mixed.
The Trump administration has rejected that approach.
In June, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued new rules for the more than $4 billion Continuum of Care funding competition, one of the federal government's principal sources of homelessness funding. After litigation temporarily disrupted the competition, a federal appeals court allowed HUD to proceed. HUD reopened applications September 18 under essentially the same funding rules, with a September 30 deadline for most communities.
HUD said Housing First had created dependency and failed to address addiction and mental illness. The department said federal money should instead promote treatment, recovery and self-sufficiency.
The new funding competition gives substantially greater emphasis to transitional housing and supportive services. HUD’s application criteria also reward communities for making substance-use treatment available within housing programs.
HUD Secretary Scott Turner has described the change as an effort to address what the administration considers the underlying causes of homelessness rather than merely providing housing.
That is the administration’s policy argument.
But another question remains.
What happens when federal funding makes permanent housing harder to provide unless local organizations change the conditions attached to it?
The pressure is already impacting Kentucky
The federal government does not have to order a Louisville nonprofit to eliminate permanent supportive housing.
It controls something powerful enough to change the organization’s choices anyway: money.
Homelessness organizations depend heavily on federal grants. The pressure is built into the competition. HUD says 40 percent of the funding will now be awarded competitively based on merit scores, while $1.3 billion is reserved for new projects that prioritize transitional housing and supportive services. Providers therefore have to decide whether to maintain permanent supportive housing programs or redesign them to compete more successfully under the new federal priorities.
That choice is already changing Kentucky’s homelessness system.
AP reported that St. John Center would be left with its 80-unit Sheehan Landing complex as permanent supportive housing if it converts its 120 community apartments to transitional housing. St. Vincent de Paul Louisville and Family Health Centers-Phoenix Health Care for the Homeless are also examining conversions.
St. John Center Executive Director Ra’Shann Martin described the uncertainty this way:
“It’s like psychological warfare the last two years, trying to figure out how to navigate these changes that are looming right over us.”
That statement describes the pressure on providers.
The consequences ultimately fall on people who need housing.
Permanent and temporary are not interchangeable
Transitional housing can be effective in the short-term for some, like individuals experiencing homelessness as a result of an unexpected loss of housing and who also have the potential for income and employment. These individuals, in theory, could temporarily resolve their homelessness through transitional housing.
Transitional housing is generally not effective for chronic, long-term homelessness, particularly for those suffering from debilitating conditions and disabilities.
The Associated Press (AP) reports on individuals in Louisville, Kentucky who have long-term, extreme cases of homelessness.
John Franklin, age 58, has long-term and extreme cases of homelessness and alcoholism. He is a cancer survivor, has heart failure, and lives on disability income.
He now lives in a different type of permanent housing called ‘supportive housing.’
“I could not make it,” Franklin said when asked about the prospect of transitional housing. “This is my safe haven.”
Phillip Sieveking lives at St. John Center’s Sheehan Landing. Like Franklin, Sieveking also suffered from debilitating conditions and disabilities. While homeless, he had diabetes and struggled to manage his medical care. Part of one leg eventually had to be amputated.
Permanent housing allowed both men to fully address and engage in recovery and wellness, as well as other social and medical services.
Policymakers should always assess and consider the impact that their policy changes will have. They should also consider whether an extreme change, like removing certain housing resources, would help an individual become self-reliant.
The question is not whether treatment for addiction or mental illness is valuable, nor is it whether transitional housing should exist.
The question is whether losing access to permanent housing should become part of the government’s strategy for encouraging treatment, recovery, or self-sufficiency.
When hardship becomes part of the policy
A Pattern emerges when a government deliberately creates conditions for hardship and uses that hardship to accomplish its end.
Government policies and agents make trade-offs with constrained resources. Programs have eligibility requirements. Public benefits are often tied to conditions.
Something different happens when deprivation itself begins doing the work.
That is the focus here: the Pattern when the hardship itself becomes the condition.
The government can use a broad range of conditions, including the granting of a benefit or contract, employment, or a license. The government does not always need to issue a direct command.
The condition can be embedded in the structure of available options.
Do what the government prefers and retain access to something important.
Refuse, fail, or become unable to meet the condition, and risk losing it.
That is why the details of homelessness policies matter.
If transitional housing simply gives people another useful option, that tells us one thing.
If people who need permanent housing increasingly cannot obtain it because federal policy intentionally favors time-limited housing tied to behavioral requirements, that tells us something else.
The difference lies in what the hardship is being asked to accomplish.
What HUD says it is trying to accomplish
HUD believes its prior approach to ending homelessness was not successful, and increasing Federal spending on homelessness-related programs did not decrease homelessness. HUD argues its program became overly focused on increasing housing opportunities, and not enough on addressing the reasons people became homeless, e.g., not focusing on treatment and recovery and/or increasing a person’s level of self-sufficiency.
The department’s 2026 proposal states, “ending chronic homelessness will ultimately require undoing the cycles of dependence.”
Supporters of Treatment First also argue that requiring participation in addiction or mental-health services can help people address conditions that contributed to their homelessness.
Those arguments deserve evaluation of their evidence.
So do the consequences of the pattern chosen to carry them out.
If the federal government wants more treatment, it could fund more treatment.
If it wants better access to mental-health care, it could expand mental-health services.
If it wants employment programs, it can fund them.
Programs that offer these services give a person the opportunity to address the reasons behind their homelessness.
However, if a person does not participate in these programs, the Federal Government can, and sometimes does, deny a person access to housing.
For someone with money, family support, or other alternatives, that might mean moving to a different location.
For someone who has already been homeless, it can mean losing support and returning to homelessness.
What to watch in Kentucky
The best evidence will come from the future.
Watch whether permanent supportive housing units are eliminated.
Look to see whether rules and requirements for residents have changed.
See what happens if a resident can’t comply with new rules and requirements.
Look to see whether changes are being made to various behavioral health and substance abuse programs in Kentucky because of changes in federal policy.
Also look at who is most negatively impacted by policy changes.
Federal policy can sound abstract when it is described through grant formulas, scoring criteria, and funding notices.
It becomes easier to understand when 120 apartments in Louisville may no longer mean what they meant before.
The Pattern to recognize is not simply government doing something harsh.
It is government arranging hardship so it produces compliance.
When access to housing becomes part of that pressure, the policy does more than decide how public money is spent.
It is using insecurity itself as a tool.
Sources
Associated Press, reporting on the Trump administration’s homelessness-policy shift and its effects on providers in Louisville and elsewhere, September 30, 2026.
https://apnews.com/article/0e286f5084fc29468a0219901959b4ab
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “HUD Overhauls Federal Homelessness Assistance,” June 1, 2026.
https://www.hud.gov/news/hud-no-26-038
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, FY 2026 Continuum of Care Program Competition page, including the current NOFO and competition materials.
https://www.hud.gov/hud-partners/coc-program-competition
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “2026 Continuum of Care Notice of Funding Opportunity Fact Sheet.”
https://www.hud.gov/sites/dfiles/CPD/documents/CoC/2026-CoC-NOFO-Factsheet.pdf