Cristina Boyer, 31, found herself in a desperate situation at the end of 2024.
First, her car was totaled, and the insurance payout she received was not enough to help her buy a new one. The accident also caused her to lose her job as a waitress at a hotel. At the same time, Boyer was on seasonal leave from her other job as a paraprofessional at McMeen Elementary School in Denver. Without any income, her bills started to pile up. Her daughter’s birthday was fast approaching, and Boyer wondered how she would get through the month. She missed her rent payment, and the property manager at her apartment complex threatened to evict the single mother and her 7-year-old daughter.
“We could have been out struggling to find somewhere to be,” Boyer told The Colorado Sun.
Boyer turned to the family liaison at McMeen for help. She said the liaison referred her to a local nonprofit called Jewish Family Services, which had partnered with Denver Public Schools to provide family support services like case management, food access, and rental assistance.
Within a few weeks, Boyer said she received a payment from JFS that covered six months of rent. The eviction notice that was hanging over her head was also gone. Boyer said the assistance has allowed her to rebuild her savings and given her and her daughter some much-needed stability.
“It gave me more time to put money aside for future bills and necessities,” Boyer explained.
Boyer’s case is an example of how rental assistance programs are intended to work. Someone gets down on their luck, falls behind on rent, and receives assistance that helps them get back on stable ground. Those programs could be completely overhauled if President Donald Trump’s Fiscal 2026 Discretionary Budget Request, also known as the “skinny budget,” is passed without amendment.
Trump’s skinny budget seeks to eliminate $26.7 billion in funding by combining a slew of federal rental assistance programs to create a single state rental assistance block grant. The realignment would also institute a two-year cap on rental assistance for able-bodied adults and prioritize funding for the elderly and people with disabilities. The aim is to reduce federal regulations and give states more flexibility to create their own rental assistance programs, the 46-page document says.
However, experts warn that making such a dramatic change to federal rental assistance programs could make it far more difficult for people like Boyer to get the help they need.
“To be sure, the federal government, when partnered with national experts, local communities, and people with lived experience of homelessness, has a central role in making federal homelessness programs more innovative and effective,” National Alliance to End Homelessness CEO Ann Oliva said in a statement. “This proposal, however, is neither innovative nor effective. It is a dismantling of established systems and programs without adequate analysis of the consequences to human life and community health.”
Specialized help
Colorado allocated more than $105 million for rental assistance programs in the 2025 budget, with $83.8 million of that total coming from federal sources. Those funds support a wide range of rental assistance programs, such as Housing Choice Vouchers (also known as Section 8), emergency rental assistance for people facing eviction, and local homelessness prevention programs. Local governments, public housing authorities, and nonprofits all have a hand in administering these programs.
Altogether, rental assistance helps prevent over 33,000 Coloradans from being evicted or becoming homeless each year, according to data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that federal rental assistance helps over 10.1 million people and 5.6 million households with children avoid homelessness across the U.S.
Cristina Boyer with her daughter Esmeralda Soto, 7, in their Denver home. (Alyte Katilius, Special to The Colorado Sun)Even though Trump’s skinny budget refers broadly to rental assistance, it works in specialized ways.
For instance, Housing Choice Vouchers help families, the elderly, military veterans, and people with disabilities afford market-rate housing without paying more than 30% of their income. Rental assistance from the HOME Investment Partnership Program can be transferred between rental properties if a tenant moves. Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS provides rental assistance and supportive services for people living with HIV/AIDS. The list goes on.
Shannon Gray, spokesperson for the Department of Local Affairs, told The Sun that Colorado “cannot shoulder this financial burden” if federal funding for housing vouchers and rental assistance disappears. Gray added that Gov. Jared Polis’ office, DOLA and many other state agencies continue to monitor the budget request.
Cathy Alderman, vice president of communications at the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, said that attempting to lump these programs together under the broad banner of rental assistance “demonstrates a lack of understanding of how these programs work.”
A move to a single block grant could also cause confusion among supportive housing providers and lead to worse outcomes for the people they serve, Alderman added.
“It just doesn’t make sense to try to lump them together because they serve very distinct and different purposes,” Alderman said. “Likewise, for public housing assistance and targeted programs for specialized populations. The reason they are currently separate is because they are intended to provide support for very distinct populations and purposes.”
Kelsi Hall is an example of how federal rental assistance can be used to solve individual problems.
Hall, 34, says she became homeless because of her mental health challenges and family issues. These challenges also made it difficult for her to keep a job and provide for her now 10-year-old son. Hall says she also does not receive child support from her child’s father, which makes it very difficult for her to pay rent in a market-rate apartment.
While she was homeless, Hall says she applied “everywhere” for a housing voucher and eventually got one from Denver County. That voucher allowed her to move into the Renaissance West End Flats, a supportive housing property operated by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.
If she didn’t have that voucher, Hall says she would not be able to afford rent in Colorado. She also worries that she could lose contact with her son.
“I’m very grateful for what’s been given to me,” Hall told The Sun.
“Everything stops.”
Not only would Trump’s state block grant idea make it more difficult for people to get help, it could also throw a wrench in the entire housing assistance ecosystem.
A state block grant would “throw everything into question” for housing providers, said Peter LiFari, CEO of Maiker Housing Partners in Adams County. Housing developers use vouchers as part of the financial viability forecasts. The number of available vouchers also determines how long an organization’s waitlist is and what options housing providers can offer the people they serve.
Cristina Boyer and her daughter Esmeralda. (Alyte Katilius, Special to The Colorado Sun)“Everything stops,” LiFari said. “Much like the capital markets are experiencing with tariffs, we stop functioning and we stop our core mission while we await guidance from a new entity about all of the pay and the administrative outcomes that are time, cost, and budget.”
This is happening at a time when both evictions and the number of people who are homeless are increasing across Colorado. Over the last year and a half, data from the Colorado Judicial Branch shows Colorado courts have heard more than 51,000 eviction cases. So far in 2025, courts have closed 20,303 cases, which puts the state on pace to surpass the over 31,000 cases closed in 2024.
Homelessness continues to increase across the state as well. According to the latest Point in Time Count, 18,715 people were homeless in Colorado in 2024, representing an increase of 29.6% compared with 2023, or 4,276 people.
The proposed changes could also force state agencies to make “extremely difficult trade-offs” because of the resource scarcity created, LiFair said. Each state will take a different approach to solving that problem, which means some groups will likely be left out, he added.
“How does this policy proposal, as stipulated by the president’s budget, further the common good for those impacted?” LiFari asked. “That’s the question I want answered.”
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