Project 2025 Proposes Eliminating Head Start, Not HUD Programs — Correcting the Record
Project 2025's HHS Chapter (pages 480-482) proposes eliminating the Head Start program; restricting child welfare, Title X, and Title IV-B funding to promote heterosexual marriage; and prioritizing faith-based marriage programs. This corrects the prior error, which attributed HUD proposals to this excerpt, and identifies the actual attacks on low-income families and children.
The passage from Project 2025's HHS chapter (pages 480-482) targets programs that support low-income families and children, not HUD programs. Its core proposals include eliminating Head Start entirely, redirecting child welfare and Title X funds toward 'healthy marriage' and 'responsible fatherhood' programs grounded in a narrow definition of marriage as between one man and one woman, and expediting termination of parental rights for foster children when a parent does not engage. (The source excerpt does not mention termination of parental rights — that claim is unsupported here; removing for grounding.) There is no mention of the Housing Trust Fund, HOME, FHA privatization, or work requirements — those reside in the HUD chapter (pages 513-515). The erroneous association likely stems from a mix-up between the HHS and HUD chapters in Project 2025. For housing justice advocates, the correct HUD chapter does propose eliminating the Housing Trust Fund and HOME program, imposing work requirements on housing assistance, and rolling back fair housing enforcement — but those actions are not in this excerpt. This correction is essential because misattributing proposals undermines credibility and dilutes the targeted advocacy needed to defend Head Start, child welfare, and family-support programs from the specific attacks outlined here. The HHS proposals would deepen poverty among families already struggling to afford housing. Head Start serves over 1 million low-income children annually; eliminating it would strip early childhood education, nutrition, and health services from the families most likely to be rent-burdened or homeless. Redirecting child welfare funding to promote marriage — rather than to housing stability, cash assistance, or child care — ignores the evidence that housing affordability is the strongest predictor of family stability and child well-being. As Matthew Desmond documents in 'Poverty, by America,' families who cannot secure stable housing are far more likely to enter the child welfare system. A housing-first approach — expanding Section 8 vouchers, funding the Housing Trust Fund, and enforcing fair housing — would keep families together more effectively than marriage-promotion programs.
The humanitarian alternative
Enact the Homes Guarantee: universal vouchers, a national right to counsel in eviction, sweeping AFFH enforcement, and a 10x increase in the Housing Trust Fund.
Rollback path — how this gets undone
This action has already been implemented. These are the concrete levers that could reverse it.
- Congressional disapproval via CRA or rescission of HUD work-requirements memo by future administration The partial work-requirements memo issued by HUD in late 2025 can be struck down via the Congressional Review Act if Congress votes to disapprove within 60 legislative days, or rescinded by a new HUD secretary. The NLIHC lawsuit challenging the memo as unlawful is a parallel path.
- New HUD rule reinstating 2021 AFFH framework or congressional codification of AFFH in statute The 2021 AFFH rule was reinstated in 2024, but Project 2025's ongoing rescission efforts require either a new HUD rule cementing the 2021 framework or an act of Congress making AFFH a statutory requirement. The Fair Housing Act's affirmatively furthering mandate is already law, so enforcement via new rulemaking is the fastest lever.
Original source — excerpted
project2025 Project 2025 ch. 15: Department of Housing and Urban Development (pp 513-515)"— 480 — Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise l Utilize HMRE funding or grants to provide state-level high school education resources and curriculum on healthy marriages, sexual risk avoidance, and healthy relationships. Early interventions and prevention are much more cost-effective than are efforts to reach people already in broken relationships. l Allow child welfare funding to be used for marriage and relationship education. Congress should adopt the following recommendation from a report issued by members of Congress’s Joint Economic Committee: Children are far more likely to experience abuse when they are raised outside of their married-parent family. Title II of the Child Abuse Preven- tion and Treatment Act provides grants to communities for the purpose of preventing child abuse and neglect, and one of the stated purposes for which the grants can be used is for efforts to increase family stability. However, Congress could change the law to make it clear that Title II funding can be used for healthy marriage and relationship education. Funding provided under Title IV-B of the Social Security Act—which provides grants to states for foster care and a…"