After Joanne Gonzalez spent three years on a waitlist, the federal government awarded her a Section 8 housing voucher in 2009.

The domestic abuse survivor and her three children moved into a $1,700-a-month apartment in Long Beach. Gonzalez paid 30% of her household income, initially $500, and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development paid the rest.

Gonzalez today is a homeowner, thanks to another government housing assistance program that covers nearly half of her mortgage payment, based on her household income. Gonzalez works as an accountant at a Nassau County cemetery.

"People maybe have the wrong idea about this program," Gonzalez, now 55, said of Section 8. "This is not welfare. This is a program that grows with your income."

[Section 8] is not welfare. This is a program that grows with your income.

— Joanne Gonzalez, Oceanside

Photo credit: Newsday/Steve Pfost

Gonzalez’s is one of at least 5,700 households on Long Island that could be on the brink of homelessness if the federal government moves forward with a plan to slash federal rental assistance by $26 billion, a Newsday analysis of government data and interviews with experts shows.

President Donald Trump’s proposal would curb housing vouchers for working-age, able-bodied adults like Gonzalez to no more than two years on the assistance.

The policy change would hit Long Island hard, according to the data analysis. Nearly all of the region’s federally subsidized housing is through vouchers, a higher share relative to the rest of the state and accounting for more than 33,000 people.

Federal policy across different political administrations has shifted from funding traditional public housing complexes toward voucher-based housing.

"It’s a shortsighted change that would have tremendous negative consequences on those who are utilizing the program," said Gwen O’Shea, president and CEO of Community Development Long Island. The nonprofit distributes vouchers in Nassau and Suffolk counties, giving more than 9,000 to help house 18,000 people in its last report year.

The federal program, O’Shea said, "is probably one of the most effective homeless prevention, housing stability initiatives that we’ve ever seen" and "critical for a region like Long Island that has a limited number of rental properties."

Voucher holders interviewed by Newsday said a cut in federal assistance could leave them forced to move in with family or even leave the state to try to avoid homelessness.

A one-person household on Long Island making less than $57,500 annually is considered by the federal government to be "very low" income and eligible for a Section 8 voucher. A minimum wage, $16.50-an-hour job in New York would yield a person working full time $34,320 a year.

Earnings below $34,650 would classify the household "extremely low" income.

Voucher recipients generally pay 30% of their household income and the government pays the balance of the rent.

The Trump administration’s proposal to cut voucher assistance does not directly appear in the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," the spending plan now being debated in Congress. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development administers the program.

The administration didn’t respond to Newsday asking if it still seeks the cuts to Section 8 and rental assistance that were spelled out in the White House’s May budget plan, which was later updated in detail.

An unidentified spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development declined to comment on whether the cuts to rental assistance remain a priority and instead referred to a statement on Trump’s budget proposal by the department’s secretary, Scott Turner.

"Importantly, it furthers our mission-minded approach at HUD of taking inventory of our programs and processes to address the size and scope of the federal government, which has become too bloated and bureaucratic to efficiently function," Turner said.

Turner defended the president's voucher cuts before a House Appropriations subcommittee on June 10, saying reform would encourage able-bodied residents to "move up and get out of assisted housing."

The administration seeks, Turner said, to "prune the administrative burden" of the federal voucher program by providing money through blocks grants to states, which can be "more thoughtful and precise in their stewardship" of vouchers, while supporting seniors and the disabled.

"It doesn’t make sense to harm large swaths of innocent people because you believe a few people may be unjustly enriched," said Ian Wilder, executive director of Long Island Housing Services, which receives federal funding for its work in addressing housing insecurity.

New York’s 1st and 2nd congressional districts, which cover the majority of Suffolk County, account for at least 20,000 people who live on federal housing assistance through Section 8 or housing choice vouchers, including at least 3,100 occupied households in which the head of the household is of working age and able-bodied, according to federal data.

Second district U.S. Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport) declined a request for an interview and did not provide his thoughts on the White House proposal.

"The president’s budget proposal is just that — a proposal," he said in a statement. "Like every administration before, President Trump has made his requests of Congress, but it’s up to appropriators to craft next year’s budget."

First District Rep. Nick LaLota (R-Amityville) and 3rd District Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-Glen Cove) didn’t respond to requests for comment.

In Nassau County’s two congressional districts, there are more than 13,000 people who live in voucher-based housing and more than 2,600 occupied households where the head of the household is of working age and able-bodied.

"We need long-term solutions to bring down costs and lower housing prices so that young people can buy homes and our seniors can afford to stay here," Rep. Laura Gillen (D-Rockville Centre) said in a statement to Newsday.

Gillen, who represents the 4th congressional district, which includes central and southern Nassau, declined an interview request and also did not specify her stance on Section 8 or housing choice voucher programs.

A spokeswoman for the state office of Homes and Community Renewal, which administers a portion of federal housing vouchers, referred to prior comments from Gov. Kathy Hochul. The governor described Trump’s budget as a "culmination of reckless and dangerous cuts," including to rental assistance programs.

The state budget includes $50 million for a new pilot program to address homelessness with state-funded vouchers.

"While I’m doing everything in my power to protect New Yorkers from these devastating blows, no state in the nation can backfill the cuts that the president is proposing," Hochul said. She has called on the state’s Republican congressional delegation to block the cuts.

The Trump administration proposal said a "majority of rental assistance funding through states would go to the elderly and disabled," but voucher holders, advocates and administrators expressed confusion as to who would be spared.

"I wasn’t sure which side of the sword I’d wind up on," said Robert Muchnick, president of Metro House Constructions and owner of Northwood Village Apartments in Patchogue.

Muchnick’s father, Saul, built the campus in 1979. It has more than 64 one-bedroom or studio apartments interspersed across well-kept lawns and sun-soaked patios.

Residents tend to stay. One unit may open up every six months, Muchnick said.

Across Long Island, the typical length of stay for tenants on a housing voucher has slightly increased over recent years. A decade ago, a voucher holder may have been in their home for just under 10 years. Last year, it was approaching 11.5 years — well beyond the two-year period the White House recommends as the new max.

Northwood Village has a federal contract to serve seniors and the disabled under the "project-based rental assistance" program, which the administration named as facing possible cuts.

"If these people lost their subsidy, there is no way they could pay what I would need to charge in rent to keep the place economically viable," Muchnick said in a recent interview from his office.

Even if seniors are spared, working-age recipients would have far less time to create the kind of success story that Felicia Calhoun touts.

Calhoun, 59 of Hempstead, received a Section 8 voucher about 15 years ago, after a two-year wait.

She is a single mother with seven children, all of whom, she proudly states, graduated from high school. She survived cancer. She went back to school to earn her bachelor’s degree and then her master’s degree, achieving a dream of her late mother.

"Stats and research would’ve counted me out," Calhoun said.

Calhoun, who grew up in West Hempstead, said she's been working since she was 14, from summer programs to grocery stores to pharmacies.

She now works as a family therapist and addiction counselor and is preparing to take a state licensing exam to further her credentials.

"Even me, with a master's degree, I still can’t afford to live on Long Island, where I was raised," said Calhoun, who pays $2,050 toward her $2,600-a-month rent for a two-bedroom apartment, part of HUD’s "family self-sufficient program."

This rental assistance afforded Calhoun, she said, the ability to "take my kids somewhat out of an impoverished neighborhood and live in another neighborhood."

Gonzalez, the domestic abuse survivor, today works at a cemetery where she makes about $60,000 a year, she said. If federal assistance was cut — and the state did not make up for it — her mortgage would be about $3,700 a month, double what she currently pays.

"You do the numbers — you have a different kind of life," Gonzalez said from her living room.

It was a mid-June day. Gonzalez stepped out of the 810-square-foot home.

The horn of a Long Island Rail Road train at the nearby station blew. Teenagers at a home across the street jumped in a car to head out on a sunsetting, crisp night.

Gonzalez has lived on Long Island since immigrating here from the Dominican Republic in 2003. She walked around her lawn and admired her azaleas blooming behind her white picket fence.

"They can review whoever is in the program," Gonzalez said, referring to political questions around fraud or abuse of federal housing subsidies. "There could be a lot of different things going on in this country, but for me and my family, we’re very grateful."