the Oasis

I didn’t want to write an editorial. But it became the only vehicle for me to tell the story behind the story — one of confusion, frustration, anger … and silence.

By Scott Morgan, Managing Editor,
Dec. 15,2025

The rooms are loud, the conversations boisterous.

The mood, however, is hardly festive. In private sessions and not-for-public board meetings, nonprofit organizations, advocates, scholars, elected officials, administrators, and social services workers talk freely amongst themselves about survival.

And not simply survival among competition, but survival from what they see as a kind of virus; from an intentional dismantling of their work. Most viscerally right now is the fear over what will become of the Continuum of Care, which is explained below.

As the Trump administration has cut, paused, rerouted, or otherwise disrupted federal funding to agencies of many types throughout 2025, agencies long charged with case work in housing, disability, substance use disorders, domestic violence, and public assistance have scrambled to figure how to survive; how to calculate the money they need to keep services working when they do not know when, how much, or even if they will receive any federal money.

It is in this chaos that frustration and anxiety are multiplying.

While critics of Trump’s policies lament, supporters of the president’s policies say that social services have become bloated without showing real results. Meanwhile, critics of that perspective say that real results are everywhere, but that people ideologically aligned with far-right perspectives do not, or do not want to, see them.

But those of the latter perspective, the people who scramble to save their work and scorn the administration’s penchant for slicing line items out of the federal budget — and who fear that such cuts are short-term savings measures that will result in far more waste and expense while abandoning people who need help most — aren’t saying much of it out loud for the public to hear.

Not in South Carolina, anyway. You can easily find vociferous writings, social media posts, and interviews blasting the Trump administration from entities in New York City or Chicago or San Francisco, where state-led support for the kinds of housing and services programs in Trump’s aim is high.

But South Carolina is a state aligned closely with Trump’s policies. Republican candidates for governor in next year’s election clamor to talk about how much further to the right they will take the president’s initiatives. And, a quick look at a Winthrop poll released last week shows the extremeness of the polarization regarding the Trump administration and the major elected officials of this state. Ninety percent of respondents on the left think Trump is doing a terrible job; 90 percent of people on the right think he’s doing a great job.

In a Republican-dominant state with that kind of support for the party’s direction, agencies that have long relied on federal backing to accomplish their missions without state investment are now worried that they have been thrown left among the proverbial wolves.

So no one from these agencies is eager to talk to a reporter on the record. But some were willing to have me convey their thoughts so that the people of South Carolina can understand what is going on away from the public, how federal disinvestment in social services might look in the near future, and how chaos might be the point.

A brief explainer of the CoC issue

CoC, the Continuum of Care, is, basically, a set of programs that aim to address homelessness and related insecurities through a holistic set of services.

One of those services is permanent supportive housing (PSH), which provides assistance and supportive services to households in which at least one member lives with a disability.

The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) made a sudden decision in September that it was looking to cut PSH funds.

Supporters of PSH, like United Housing Connections in Greenville, make the case that while PSH comes with some upfront investment, the approach keeps people housed, keeps them from reentering homelessness, and makes it easier for people with lingering issues (such as substance use disorders) to rebuild their lives from a place of stable housing.

Critics of PSH, in general, argue that its low barriers to entry — which are much more lenient than those to transitional housing (more on that in a minute) — enable substance abuse and create what then-Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance called “cycles of poverty and despair” in need of compassionate solutions.

At a HUD hearing in 2023, Vance said that people in PSH are “having things like drug use normalized around them.”

Another term to be familiar with here is housing-first, which prioritizes permanent housing. PSH exists under the model of housing-first.

On Nov. 13, HUD announced that it wanted to pull money from PSH programs and instead fund transitional housing programs — which are higher-barrier and often have more strict time limits for residency than programs like Rapid Rehousing and Rapid Reset in Rock Hill do.

Led by New York in late November, 21 states filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration and HUD to block changes to CoC funding. A second lawsuit by another 11 local governments and nonprofits was filed soon after.

About 90 minutes before HUD was due in court on Dec. 8 regarding the CoC suit, it rescinded a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) concerning the CoC. A HUD representative told Politico that it would reissue the NOFO as soon as possible.

In a statement, an agency spokesperson said, “The Department intends to make resources available in a timely manner so grantees with measurable results can continue to support vulnerable populations. The Department remains fully committed to making long overdue reforms to its homelessness assistance programs,”

Some key facts before we continue

• In 2023, HUD (then under the Biden administration) showed ample evidence that the housing-first approach worked.
• A year ago, also under the Biden administration, housing/homeless support agencies were required to promote housing-first initiatives in their grant proposals for HUD money. Now, the Trump administration is looking to purge housing-first initiatives and is scouring previous grant proposals for language indicating a housing-first approach. Meaning that last year’s required language is now this year’s liability.
• HUD’s recission of its transitional housing-heavy NOFO is likely temporary. But there is nothing in place for housing agencies to apply to in mid-December, when grant applications for the following year are common.
• Some proposed HUD measures would violate the federal Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). Domestic violence services providers are not allowed under VAWA to mandate any services. HUD’s proposals would require certain mandated services.

Silence and chaos in South Carolina

I have asked several people working in the housing space in South Carolina about what they are facing regarding the CoC. None would speak on the record.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors is asking members, particularly in red states like South Carolina, to sign onto a letter to Congress that urges federal lawmakers to renew expiring grants and that warns of widespread disruptions without action.

None of South Carolina’s mayors who belong to the Conference who were asked about the letter responded before this story went to print.

Of the services workers with whom I’ve spoken, their public silence is not because they have nothing to say. Rather, it’s because they cannot speak without jeopardizing programs that they struggle to maintain in good times. Some do not wish to be political antagonists.

The consensus among housing advocates with whom I’ve spoken is that they are tired, nervous, confused, and angry. They argue that housing should not be a political issue, but has been made one of such divisiveness that the only thing left and right can agree on is, as one person I spoke with said, that “no one wants to see public poverty. No one likes to see homelessness.”

What housing advocates I’ve spoken with also say is that should HUD’s transitional housing approach go into effect, as many as 170,000 people nationwide who have escaped homelessness will be back on the streets. There is no agreed-upon number specific to South Carolina. But it is agreed upon that it will be in the thousands.

“This,” said the advocate above, “is going to make homelessness more visible.”

Advocates are also worried that any gap in funding will cause major problems in programs like Rapid Rehousing initiatives, which, in York, Chester, and Lancaster counties, provides 12 months of stable housing (and has shown marked success in its short existence).

But the main consensus is that the chaos is the point. That homelessness has now moved past being a politically partisan issue and has moved into a place in which extreme policies based on bad data are forcing those who work in the space of getting people out of homelessness to operate in the dark — where advocates say the chaos is either a result of ineptitude or intention.

It would appear to be a mix of both. Federal officials talk a very good game of compassion and responsible spending. But these same officials ignore objective data that show the effectiveness of programs that put permanent housing first.

Whether these officials are more interested in political points or practical solutions is impossible to say. But they are not interested in evidence, and their indifference to objective data will hurt my neighbors and yours.

The Trump administration is fond of announcing sweeping changes to programs without either understanding, caring, or at least an acknowledging that such announcements sow chaos among the very populations they talk about helping so compassionately.

There is no compassion in chaos. No one can say that housing assistance programs are perfect. But change to programs can’t undermine the tenuous stability aid recipients have come to rely on.

If the Trump administration is serious about solving crises like homelessness, then officials need to bring advocates and agencies and service providers into the conversation and stop making decisions (or at least announcements) that undermine the very compassion the White House says it wants.

Like the Oasis? Support our work! Your generous support (of any amount) is what keeps us going.

Want to stay up with stories about your neighbors in South Carolina? Start by subscribing to our newsletter. It’s easy. Just scroll down and enter your email address, and get notified when new stories are published.