Long Island’s only nonprofit investigating housing discrimination has come under attack by President Donald Trump’s administration, which has informed the Bohemia-based organization that it will lose over $1 million in funding during the next three years.
But a legal fight over the issue is taking shape.
In a letter to Long Island Housing Services, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Trump-created Department of Government Efficiency, said the funding reduction is a part of a cutting of such financial outlays nationwide.
But Ian Wilder, the housing services executive director, told the Press that a lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Boston by the National Fair Housing Alliance on behalf of a number of such nonprofits that has temporarily at least halted the Trump administration’s cutbacks.
“It’s all working its way through the courts,” said Wilder, who has headed the nonprofit since 2018.
Wilder said at this point, the nonprofit has been paid federal funds. “As far as we’re concerned, our contract (with the federal government) is in force.”
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LIHS had won a three-year enforcement grant worth $425,000 a year under the U.S. Fair Housing Initiatives Program. It has a little over $1 million remaining on the award that is to continue through July 2027, Wilder said. The $1 million is what the Trump administration wants to cut. The grant represents about 20% of LIHS’s annual budget.
But, Wilder said, “It is a potential problem if we don’t get paid for our work” going forward. “It’s an uncertainty is the way I would describe it.”
If the Trump administration is successful in ending funding to the nonprofit, Wilder said the consequences would be severe.
Complaints about housing discrimination would be impacted, he said. The nonprofit’s efforts to educate the public about such discrimination would also be affected.
“It will cut back on our ability to help Long Islanders,” Wilder said.
LIHS has committed to handling some 300 complaints of housing discrimination under the current grant. The organization investigates housing discrimination complaints. It also provides education and training on fair housing laws for government agencies, the real-estate industry and the public.
LIHS plays an active role on Long Island. It reached a $105,000 settlement last year with the operator of five apartment complexes in Suffolk County accused of racial and debility discrimination.
Gov. Kathy Hochul weighed in on the matter, saying in a statement that the federal money the Trump administration is attempting to cut is critical to making sure families throughout the state can receive affordable housing.
“Allowing DODGE to take a red pen to vital programs like these will cause real harm to communities statewide,” the statement said.
Neither HUD nor DODGE returned calls seeking comment.
LIHS is not the only such organization to feel the Trump administration’s ax. The Long Island City, Queens-based Fair Housing Justice Center said it has lost $260,000 in federal fair housing funds. But it said it has not lost its grant that deals with enforcement.
Nationwide, HUD has canceled about 50 percent of the 162 fair housing grants. HUD has said the grants were terminated by DOGE, an organization that until recently has been headed by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and until recently a close Trump ally.
The Washington, D.C.-based National Fair Housing Alliance, which has intervened on behalf of nonprofits nationwide that face Trump-spending cuts, said that eliminating local Fair Housing Initiative Program grants would hurt seniors, disabled veterans, people with disabilities, people of color, families with children and women.
“These harmful cuts will not result in efficiencies,” Nikitra Bailey, NFHA’s executive vice president, said in a statement. “Instead it will hurt everyday people trying to secure housing free of discrimination with the ability to live and thrive in well-resourced communities.”
“This will be devastating during the nation’s fair and affordable housing crises and could result in more people becoming homeless,” Bailey said.
