Orlando Sentinel: Nonprofits in Orlando say federal freeze could have thrown hundreds onto the streets
Homeless advocacy groups in Central Florida breathed a heavy sigh of relief after the Trump administration on Wednesday rescinded its unprecedented order to freeze all federal grant funding. But they said the threat is not over.
“We saw the various fabric of our community’s very small safety net being unraveled right before our eyes,” said the Rev. Mary Lee Downey, CEO of the group Hope Partnership. “Just hours ago, I was in my board meeting in tears. I am not in tears now.”
Downey and Martha Are, the CEO of Orlando’s Homeless Services Network, were joined at the First United Methodist Church in Orlando Wednesday by U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost, who condemned what he called an illegal and unconstitutional order by the Office of Management and Budget.
Monday’s order, which had been paused on Tuesday before being rescinded on Wednesday, required agencies to review program compliance with “DEI, woke gender ideology and the green new deal” and froze all grant funding while that review was underway. It left many groups, universities, local governments and businesses that depend on federal funding scrambling to make sense of it.
Frost, D-Orlando, warned that the original executive order to review federal grants for diversity programs still remains in effect.
“Instead of a blanket freeze, they’re going to look at programs individually to try to see what they want to cut,” Frost said. “So we’re going to remain vigilant. … Democrats and Republicans, everyone came together and said, ‘Wait, we need these programs in our community, and we want to make sure that they’re still available.’”
President Trump on Wednesday accused the media of mischaracterizing the rollout of his directive and said his administration was “merely looking at parts of the big bureaucracy where there has been tremendous waste and fraud and abuse.”
Are said federal grants make up 77% of her agency’s budget, including for the “Point-in-Time” count of the region’s homeless, which is now underway. The federal payment portal it uses became inaccessible when the OBM memo dropped, though it is now back up.
“Over 1,000 households were at risk of facing eviction due to unexpected cancellation of rent payments and needed services,” said Are.
Waving a thick stack of paper in her hands, she said those were “the rent checks that we will be sending out for February, rent that we weren’t sure yesterday we were going to be able to do. This many people, this many households, had ties to the funds that were in jeopardy yesterday.”
Downing said that despite the uncertainty over the rescinded order, there was a positive message in the overwhelming response against it.
“But let me be clear, we do not come to you today with more resources,” she said. “We do not have expanded funding or new opportunities. This simply allows us to continue to do the work that we had already planned to do. The programs that were nearly halted can now move forward. But they should never have been threatened in the first place.”
Frost praised the work of organizations like Homeless Services Network and Hope Partnership and criticized the OMB order that described some federal funding as a “waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve.”
“I want to make sure that people know that these organizations, they’re not grifters, they’re not people who are misusing money,” Frost said. “They’re people working, with not a lot of resources, to keep people off the streets.”
He warned constituents that they might one day need the help of those agencies themselves.
“You are closer to needing that check and the help from these people than you are being a billionaire like Elon Musk,” Frost said. “You’re closer to being on the streets than you are being in a mansion. That’s the situation our country finds ourselves in.”
He also said the order violated both the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which prevents a president from unilaterally withholding funding appropriated by Congress, and the Constitution’s separation of powers.
“What they did is completely illegal,” Frost said. “Congress is not under the president. We are equal. We are co-governing the country, and Congress has the power of the purse. … We can’t let that slide without accountability.”
By: Steven Lemongello and Michael Cuglietta
Source: Orlando Sentinel