The End of ‘Housing First’

The Trump administration goes for huge homelessness policy shift: According to confidential grant-making plans first reported by The New York Times, the Trump administration will pivot away from the “housing first” approach to homelessness alleviation, shifting “billions to short-term programs that impose work rules, help the police dismantle encampments, and require the homeless to accept treatment for mental health or addiction.”

Naturally, “critics say it could quickly place as many as 170,000 formerly homeless people at risk of returning to the streets.” The policy shift would affect how roughly $3.5 billion in federal funds are doled out.

“Housing First programs provide subsidized apartments without preconditions to the homeless,” details the Times, “offering, but not requiring, treatment for mental health or addiction.” This has been the dominant approach pursued by the federal government (and many state government programs) since roughly 2009, when it became popular. The theory is that being stable in one’s housing then allows a person to address their other issues: mental illness, addiction, and lack of gainful employment, among others. But this hasn’t exactly worked as intended, as Zach Weissmueller and I reported back in 2023, and approaches that pair housing provision with strings attached have also had good results (in many cases, better results). But the cost of living in the places you’re looking to shelter homeless people also makes a big difference when it comes to efficient disbursal of these funds.

Further Epstein revelations: The House Oversight Committee just released another batch of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails, which portray a man who seemed confident he had enough damaging information about now-President Donald Trump to “take him down.”

Most interestingly comes the disclosure of a 2011 email in which Epstein had written to his longtime girlfriend/consigliere Ghislaine Maxwell (later convicted of helping orchestrate the sex-trafficking operation) that Trump was the “dog that hasn’t barked.”

This was fresh on the heels of Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Epstein victim, going pubic with her account of abuse and trafficking (and providing tabloids with photos to substantiate the account).

A direct email exchange from 2011 between Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell, just released by House Oversight Committee Democrats.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) 2025-11-12T13:48:13.125Z

We already knew about Epstein and Trump’s formerly close relationship, but these emails provide more insight into Epstein’s belief that he had critical information on Trump that would be politically damaging to him.

Scenes from New York: Meet the Upper East Side moms who are pissed about Mamdani.

QUICK HITS

• The government shutdown just ended after the House passed the spending package, 222–209, and sent it to the president’s desk for signing.
• White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said yesterday that both jobs data and consumer price index reports for October are unlikely to be released right now due to the government shutdown and (mysteriously) the Democrats.
• Raphael W. Bostic will step down as president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta at the end of February, reports The New York Times. “Bostic has served in the position since 2017; his departure from the Fed is the latest as the central bank faces intense pressure from the White House to lower interest rates. His colleague Adriana Kugler resigned in August from her role as a member of the Fed’s board of governors, giving President Trump an opportunity to replace her with one of his top economic advisers, Stephen I. Miran.” The president doesn’t get to choose Bostic’s replacement, as “the heads of the 12 regional Reserve Banks are selected by their respective boards of local business leaders.” But this affects the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which “has 12 members at any one time,” notes The Guardian. “These include the central bank’s seven board governors, the president of the New York Fed, and four of the 11 other regional Fed presidents, who rotate through yearly terms.”
• “[Claudia] Sheinbaum’s government says Mexico’s murder rate has come down by 32% in the year since she took office,” reports The Economist. “Analysis by The Economist confirms that the rate has fallen, though by a significantly smaller margin, 14%. Counting homicides alone misses an important part of the picture, namely the thousands of people who disappear in Mexico every year, many of whom are killed and buried in unmarked graves. A broader view of deadly crime that includes manslaughter, femicide and two-thirds of disappearances (the data for disappearances is imperfect), shows a more modest decline of 6%. Still, Mexico is on track for about 24,300 murders this year, horribly high, but well below the recent annual average of slightly over 30,000.”
• “In a world where 16 Acelas per hour were leaving New York and reaching Washington in 100 minutes, how many airlines could compete?” asks Quico Toro at The Free Press. “Not many. And that, one suspects, is why no such service will ever be allowed to exist.”
• Agree:

Standard of living here does not include the number of children one has, the number of people with meaningful social lives, and rich support systems. Yes, you’ve gotten immense gains in tech, and improved quality of food and entertainment, and educational opportunity.

But 50… https://t.co/wjxOeeXafA

— Michael Brendan Dougherty (@michaelbd) November 12, 2025

you really should steam the flags you just ordered off amazon before the campaign photo shoot pic.twitter.com/tUNOovEKm1

— Josh Billinson (@jbillinson) November 12, 2025