At around 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, the executive director of Bangor’s housing authority discovered he was unable to withdraw any of his operating funds.
The lock-out happened shortly after the newly inaugurated President Donald Trump announced a freeze on all federal grants and loans, a move that Senator Susan Collins, R-Maine, decried as “far too sweeping” and one expected to impact trillions in government spending.
The memo announcing the freeze from Trump’s acting director of the Office of Management and Budget said it would be effective at 5 p.m. Tuesday, but the executive directors of both Portland and Bangor’s housing authorities said they were already unable to access federal funds by early Tuesday afternoon.
“We’re locked out. I can’t draw down any of our grants. I can’t draw down anything,” Mike Myatt of BangorHousing said. “And I just reached out to my colleagues, and most of them are responding like, ‘We’re frozen, too.’”
Brian Frost, the executive director of the Portland agency, said he’d run into the same problem but in the absence of any guidance from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was unsure whether the system had been shut down early or was just overwhelmed.
“In the short term, it shouldn’t have any immediate impact, we have financial stability within our reserve funding,” Frost said of his agency’s ability to operate. “But certainly, smaller housing authorities could really be adversely affected.”
Though the operations of both Bangor and Portland’s housing authorities — from construction activity on public housing projects to paying down tenant rent and utility bills — are at a standstill, a memo Myatt received from the Office of Management and Budget promised the freeze would not affect rental assistance.
MaineHousing, the state housing authority, said it received a notice from the federal Office of Management and Budget Monday night about the freeze but has yet to receive clarification on which programs are being affected.
“Like you, we have a lot of questions,” Scott Thistle, the agency’s spokesperson, said. “It does, however, appear to affect MaineHousing’s federally funded programs.”
Without federal funding, Myatt doesn’t see how any public housing authority could last more than a couple of months. Construction on any public housing projects across Maine will need to stop, he said, and agencies will be unable to pay any bills.
“I’m speechless,” Myatt said.
