Brown Blasts Trump Designee to Lead Homelessness Council
Designee Has Publicly Proposed Policies that Punish Individuals Who are Homeless
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) – ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs – today released the following statement after President Trump selected Robert Marbut to lead the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH). Marbut has publicly proposed several harmful ideas that would effectively punish homeless Americans and are deeply troubling coming from someone selected to lead the agency tasked with responding to homelessness.
The USICH coordinates the federal response to homelessness by working in close partnership with senior leaders across 19 federal member agencies and creating a national partnership at every level of government to reduce and end homelessness.
“It is a problem that the Trump Administration’s designee to head the Interagency Council on Homelessness may believe that it’s more important to stop churches from providing food to homeless people than it is to find those people homes. If true, this is yet another example of this administration obstructing efforts to end homelessness in this country,” said Brown.
Brown has led efforts to reduce homelessness in the U.S. and earlier this year, sent a letter to President Trump calling on the President to stop advancing policies that would exacerbate homelessness, including proposals to slash federal housing programs. Brown also called on the President to support initiatives that will help prevent and end homelessness. These include investing in affordable housing and resuming implementation of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule to help communities identify local barriers to fair and affordable housing.
Brown has also repeatedly fought proposals from the Trump Administration to eliminate USICH.
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