Moments after Daniris Espinal entered her new apartment in Brooklyn, she prays. On the following nights, she would wake up and touch the walls for comfort – finding a relief in them, which turned into tears over her morning coffee.
These walls were possible through a federal program that pays rent for about 60,000 families and people who escape from homelessness or domestic violence. Espinal was running from both.
But the program, vouchers for an emergency housing, exhausts the money – and quickly.
Financing is expected to be used by the end of next year, according to a letter from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and received by the Associated Press. This would leave tens of thousands across the country to roll to pay their rent.
This would be one of the biggest one-off losses of leases in the United States, analysts say and subsequent expulsions can break these people-after a few years of recovering their lives on the street or back into violent relations.
“To stop, it would completely increase all the progress they have made,” says Sonia Acosta, a policy analyst at the Center for Budget and Political Priorities, which explores housing.
“And then you multiply this 59,000 households,” she said.
The program, launched in 2021, by then -President Joe Biden as part of the Pandemic Rescue Savior Plan Act, $ 5 billion was allocated to help bring people out of homelessness, domestic violence and human trafficking.
People from San Francisco to Dallas to Talahasi, Florida were enrolled – among them children, elderly and veterans – with the expectation that funding would continue until the end of the decade.
But with the price of rental ballooning, those $ 5 billion will end far faster.
Last month, HUD sent letters to groups scattering money, advising them to “manage your EHV program with the expectation that there will be no additional funding from HUD.”
The future of the program is based on a congress, which can decide to add money while developing the federal budget. But this is a relatively expensive perspective at a time when Republicans who control congress are dead to reduce federal costs to allow tax reduction.
Democratic representative Maxine Waters, who supported the program four years ago, insists another $ 8 billion in infusion.
But organizations lobby Republican and democratic legislators to redirect funding, they told the AP that they were not optimistic. Four GOP legislators who control the budget negotiations did not respond to AP’s requests for comment.
“We were told that it would be a lot of labor struggle,” says Kim Johnson, a public policy manager in a low -income national residential coalition.
Espinal, both of her daughters, 4 and 19, live on one of these vouchers in an apartment with three bedrooms with over $ 3,000 a month rent, extremely difficult to cover without a voucher.
Four years ago, Espinal fought a marriage in which her husband controlled her decisions, from seeing her family and friends to leaving the apartment to go shopping.
When she spoke, her husband told her he was wrong or wrong or crazy.
Isolated and in the fog of postpartum depression, she did not know what to believe. “Every day, little by little, I started to feel not like myself,” she said. “I felt my mind wasn’t mine.”
When the notifications arrived in March 2021, looking for about $ 12,000 to rent, it was a shock. Espinal had left his job at the insistence of her husband and he promised to cover family expenses.
Police reports documented the outbursts of her husband’s anger were enough for a judge to give her custody of her daughter in 2022, Espinal said.
But her future was uncertain: she was alone, owned thousands of dollars and had no income to pay him or support her newborns and teenage daughters.
Financial assistance to prevent the pandemics prevented the pandemic on sailing, paying her for rent and protecting her family from shelters. But there was a date of expiration.
At that time, an emergency vouchers were introduced aimed at people in the Espinal situation.
“The leading cause of family homelessness is domestic violence” in New York, “said Gina Cappucci, Director of Housing Access and Stability Services at New Destiny Housing, a non -profit, which has linked 700 survivors of domestic violence to the voucher program.
Espinal was one of those 700 and moved to his Brooklyn apartment in 2023.
The relief exceeded finding a safe place to live, she said. “I was worth the value, my sense of peace, and I was able to restore my identity.”
Now, she said, she puts aside money in the case of the worst. Because “This is my fear, I lose control of everything I have worked so hard for.”