President Donald Trump proposed cutting funding that fuels housing discrimination watchdogs. If money to fund those organizations is not appropriated by Congress, CNY Fair Housing could lose 70% of its funding. Credit: Michelle Gabel | Central Current

Local organizations enforcing laws that protect tenants facing housing discrimination might soon lose much of their funding in the next federal budget. 

CNY Fair Housing, the organization enforcing anti-discrimination laws for tenants in the region, could lose up to 70% of its budget, said Executive Director Sally Santangelo.

The organization is staring down a federal budget season that could include a complete wipeout of the Fair Housing Initiatives Program — a $60 million program that has existed since former President Ronald Reagan’s administration. The cut was floated in President Donald Trump’s proposed budget.

CNY Fair Housing and other fair housing organizations rely almost entirely on FHIP funding.  

The passage of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” exacerbated concerns for fair housing organizations around the country and locally. 

Advocates say Congress can still act and fund the FHIP program. FHIP’s funding will ultimately be determined through appropriations bills, which Congress is now set to draft. The federal budget must be passed by Oct. 1, 2025.

Private fair housing organizations like CNY Fair Housing are vital to enforcing anti-discrimination laws in housing. In 2023 — the most recent reporting year for comprehensive fair housing complaint data — organizations funded by FHIP processed more than 75% of all complaints in the country.

“The staff at these organizations is currently already underfunded significantly, so these actions are really going to push families into homelessness,” said Nikitra Bailey, the executive vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance. The NFHA is a national organization aiming to end housing discrimination.

Trump’s budget proposal unleashed a wave of uncertainty across fair housing organizations who could see their ability to protect wronged tenants severely diminished, Bailey said. A large portion of spending and program cuts proposed in Trump’s budget have already taken place through the reconciliation process, which ended with the passage of Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

U.S. Rep. John Mannion, a Democrat representing Onondaga County, said in a statement to Central Current he opposed the cuts to fair housing programs, and that he will try to lobby Republican members of Congress to continue supporting FHIP.  

Cuts to FHIP are part of the Trump administration’s broader onslaught on fair housing funding. 

In February, the Department of Government Efficiency sought to outright stop funding some fair housing programs. Both DOGE and the White House have argued that FHIP-funded organizations advocate against single family neighborhoods and promote “radical equity policies.”

A lawsuit from fair housing organizations represented by the NFHA got the grants reinstated earlier this year, but a pending decision in federal court could again imperil funding.

“What we’ve seen is the sowing of chaos, dysfunction and fear from the administration,” Bailey said.

Both the looming cuts and the ongoing legal battle with DOGE have created an environment of unpredictability at CNY Fair Housing, making planning and staffing the organization properly too difficult, Santangelo said.

CNY Fair Housing has not been able to hire a critical second attorney to process complaints of breaches of fair housing law in its 17-county service area in Northern and Central New York, as well as the Mohawk Valley. The organization has also struggled to fill a grants manager role, whose duties have fallen on Santangelo, due to uncertain future funding. 

“Coming into this administration, I expected that we would potentially face a bunch of cuts. I’m not naive to think that our work would be supported,” Santangelo said. “I’m proud to do work that obviously is impactful enough that people seek to eliminate it.”

The potential cuts would also offset an increase in funding from New York state that was meant to cover CNY Fair Housing’s expansion into three more Mohawk Valley counties. Now, that extra funding is helping them maintain operations at a level prior to their planned expansion, Santangelo said.

“We’re now having to sort of reorient that just to keep on treading water and that is not the intent,” Santangelo added. “Our ability to actually do that extra work is imperiled by the federal funding cuts.”

The Fair Housing Initiatives Program funds several programs that help private fair housing organizations like CNY Fair Housing advocate for tenants subject to discrimination. CNY Fair Housing often helps disabled tenants who lack accessibility accommodations and tenants who landlords may have discriminated against. 

Pioneer Homes is pictured. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current

The two grants under FHIP that support CNY Fair Housing’s work are the Private Enforcement Initiative and the Education and Outreach Initiative. 

The Private Enforcement Initiative grant provides funding for housing enforcement organizations to conduct testing, investigate housing violations and obtain enforcement of the rights granted under the Fair Housing Act, a federal law that seeks parity in housing.  

This grant covers the bulk of CNY Fair Housing’s work and makes up a sizable piece of its budget. 

CNY Fair Housing received $425,000 of such funds — 40% of the organization’s budget — in the most recent funding year, which enabled the organization to process 450 fair housing legal complaints. 

About 10 to 15 of those resulted in a lawsuit being filed on behalf of the tenant, Santangelo said. 

CNY Fair Housing also advocates for tenants in conflict resolution outside the courthouse. Santangelo said that around 30 of the complaints received each year are resolved through mediation with landlords or property managers. 

Most of those complaints center on reasonable accommodations for tenants with disabilities, Santangelo added. CNY Fair Housing staff filter complaints that have merit and depict breaches of fair housing law.

“That is an incredibly efficient thing to do in terms of the use of federal resources,” Santangelo said.

CNY Fair Housing also received around $125,000, or just slightly more than 10% of its total budget, from FHIP’s Education and Outreach Initiative grant. That grant allows fair housing organizations to educate the public and housing providers about equal opportunities in housing and compliance with fair housing laws.

“We let tenants know that this isn’t something they have to put up with,” said Alex Lawson, CNY Fair Housing’s housing policy manager. “They have legal rights.”

Another approximately 20% of the organization’s budget comes from broader Community Development Block Grants disbursed by cities like Syracuse and Watertown to help with fair housing enforcement. Those CDBG grants are also likely to be phased out based on the president’s funding proposal, Lawson said.

In their budget proposal, White House officials wrote that FHIP grants promote radical equity policies at a time when the president is trying to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion. Officials also argued that the nature of advocating for fair housing is diametrically opposed to the proliferation of single-family neighborhoods.

The Trump administration argued that the bulk of fair housing complaints, 80%, are handled by state and local public agencies funded under the Fair Housing Assistance Program, funding for which was left intact in the budget proposal. 

Lawson said that rationale contradicts the data provided by multiple federal agencies and from public organizations funded by the fair housing assistance program. 

The National Fair Housing Alliance’s 2024 annual report found that organizations funded by the FHIP grant took on 75% of fair housing complaints.

“They didn’t really seem to be aware of the impact of the private organizations, which sort of speaks to the lack of attention to detail in all of these things,” Lawson said. “But the exact explanation for depleting FHIP in the federal budget was ideological and not based on efficiency or anything like that. It was an opposition to the idea of fair housing.”

Bailey, the executive vice president of the NFHA, said the decision to not fund FHIP is puzzling. She said the program has received bipartisan support since its institution under Reagan.

“These local organizations are on the front line serving disabled veterans, seniors, survivors of domestic violence,” she said. “They are serving families with children and others who are seeking fair and affordable housing opportunities. They’re doing very important work in local communities throughout the United States.”

As CNY Fair Housing awaits a decision from Congress on FHIP funding, the organization is also enmeshed in a legal fight to keep its current funding from being terminated by the federal government.  

The NFHA has launched two lawsuits. It filed one in February against HUD and DOGE. It filed another in early June, against HUD. 

CNY Fair Housing is a part of both suits, Lawson said.

The February suit against HUD and DOGE stems from the abrupt termination of almost $30 million in appropriated fair housing funds. 

The termination led to several organizations suspending fair housing cases, turning away clients and halting investigations into breaches of fair housing law. While Bailey said that some of the affected organizations have had funding restored, the lawsuit has not been resolved yet. 

The June lawsuit is similar but also notes that HUD has not yet awarded grants that FHIP-funded organizations applied for last year. That funding has already been appropriated by Congress but HUD has not spent it, plaintiffs argue.

“Ultimately, we are going to see the homelessness rate increase in a time where we’re in the throes of a fair and affordable housing crisis,” Bailey said.

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Eddie Velazquez is a Syracuse journalist covering economic justice in the region. He is focused on stories about organized labor, and New York's housing and childhood lead poisoning crises. You can follow...