Moments after Daniris Esperenal participated in her new apartment in Brooklyn, she prayed. On the nights that followed, she woke up and touched the walls for reassurance – in which she found a comfort that turned into crying on the morning coffee.

These walls were possible through a federal program Pay rent For about 60,000 families and individuals fleeing homelessness or domestic violence. Espinal was flying from both.

But the program, emergency housing vouchers, runs out of money – quickly.

Funding is expected to be used by the end of next year, according to a message from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and obtained by the Associated Press. This would leave tens of thousands across the country scrambling to pay their rent.

Analysts say this will be among the largest losses for one time to help rent in the United States, and that the evacuations that followed can cut these people-after several years of rebuilding their lives-to the street or returning to abusive relationships.

“Stopping work will increase all the progress they have made,” said Sonia Acosta, a policy analyst at the Budget and Politics Priority Center, which is looking for housing assistance.

“Then she hit this by 59,000 families,” she said.

The program, which was launched in 2021 by then President Joe Biden as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of the epidemic, was allocated 5 billion dollars to help get people out of homelessness, domestic violence and human trafficking.

People from San Francisco to Dallas were registered to Talhaasi, Florida, including children, the elderly and old warriors – with the expectation that the financing will continue until the end of the contract.

But with the enlarged cost of rent, $ 5 billion will end much faster.

Last month, HUD sent messages to collections to differentiate money, and advised them “to manage your EHV program with the expectation that there is no additional funding from HUD.”

The future of the program settles with Congress, which may decide to add money because it makes the federal budget. But it is a relatively costly probability at a time when Republicans, who control Congress, have died to reduce federal spending to withstand tax cuts.

Democratic Representative Maxine Waters, who defended the program four years ago, is paying another $ 8 billion leakage.

But organizations that pressure Republican and Democratic lawmakers to re -financing the financing told AP that they were not optimistic. Four legislators did not respond to the Republican Party who supervise the AP requests for the AP requests.

“We have been told that it will be an arduous battle,” Kim Johnson, Director of General Policy at the National Coalition of the Housing Coalition.

Espelal and her 4 and 19-year-old daughters live on one of those vouchers in a three-bedroom apartment with monthly rental more than $ 3,000-a very difficult amount without the voucher.

Four years ago, Espinal fought her way of marriage as her husband took control of her decisions, from seeing her family and friends to leave the apartment to go shopping.

When she spoke, her husband said she was wrong, wrong or mad.

Isolated and in the fog of depression after birth, you did not know what to believe. She said, “Every day, little by little, I started to feel that I did not like myself.” “I felt that my mind was not mine.”

When the notifications arrived in March 2021, they seek to get about $ 12,000 in the rear rent, this was a shock. Espainal left her job based on urging her husband and promised to cover the family expenses.

Espinal said the police reports documenting her husband’s shrouds of anger were sufficient for a judge to give their daughter’s nursery in 2022.

But her future was fraught with risks: she was alone, the debt of thousands of dollars in the back rent and she had no income to pay her or support her daughters born and the adolescent homeland.

Financial aid to prevent evacuation while the epidemic kept on its feet, pushed its back and keeping the family outside the shelters. But the expiration date was.

Almost at that time, the Emergency Housing Program was presented, and people are targeted in Espinal.

“The main cause of family homelessness is domestic violence” in New York City, “said Jenna Kabcchti, director of housing and stability services at New Distani Sakani, a non -profit organization linking 700 survivors of domestic violence of the vouchers program.

Espinal was one of these 700, and she moved to her apartment in Brooklyn in 2023.

She said that relief has exceeded a safe place to live. “I gained my value, my hair, and I was able to rebuild my identity.”

Now, she said, she puts money aside in the worst. Because “this is my fear, and lost control of everything I worked hard for it.”

This story was originally shown on Fortune.com

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2025-04-21 08:26:00