What we call the Free Housing Bureaucratic Complex — a sprawling web of federal, state, and local agencies tasked with delivering subsidized housing — promises shelter but routinely delivers despair.

Across the nation, and starkly in Colorado, this system’s inefficiencies, self-serving priorities, and endless excuses exacerbate homelessness for the very people it claims to serve. As Debbie Kelley’s article in The Colorado Springs Gazette illustrates, the system’s failures are not mere inconveniences but acts of cruelty that demand urgent reform.

Consider Kaniya Johnson. A mother of three special-needs teenagers, she moved to Colorado Springs from Texas seeking a better life. Instead, she found herself homeless for more than a month, her family sleeping in a car and roach infested motel rooms, because the Colorado Springs Housing Authority delayed her federal voucher transfer.

“Something that should have taken one to two days… has taken more than 30 days,” Johnson said, her frustration representing countless other similar dilemmas nationwide. From Seattle to Miami, reports on social media and housing advocacy sites like Shelterforce reveal similar delays, with voucher “port-ins” stalled by poor coordination, lack of communication, and bureaucratic inertia.

Pamela Langford, a 51-year-old with multiple sclerosis, was evicted from her ADA-accessible apartment in Colorado Springs on Thursday — leaving her on the street — over accusations from a neighbor that were never proven. Supported by fellow 25 residents, she alleges retaliation for initiating tenants’ rights advocacy, pointing to inconsistent policies. This mirrors national trends: a 2024 HUD report notes rising complaints about arbitrary evictions in subsidized housing, involving authorities prioritizing compliance over compassion.

The Free Housing Bureaucratic Complex thrives on self-preservation. Agencies hide behind HUD’s complex regulations, offering mumbo jumbo excuses like “compliance requirements” or “capacity issues,” as Colorado Springs Housing Authority’s Deputy Director Paul Spencer cited. Yet, these justifications ring hollow when families like Johnson’s wait weeks for paperwork corrections — while bureaucrats move at the rate of slugs — or when tenants like Langford lose homes without clear cause.

A 2025 National Low Income Housing Coalition study found that voucher processing times average 60-90 days in the most functional service areas, and years in others. Bureaucrats seem more invested in their processes than in outcomes for the people they serve.

Funding shortfalls — caused by promising more than these programs can deliver — worsen the cruelty. HUD’s 2021 Emergency Housing Voucher program, set to expire in 2026, leaves residents like Elizabeth (last name withheld), in Colorado Springs, fearing homelessness as vouchers expire.

“I’m scared again, and I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I get caught up, and then I get behind again. I’ll do whatever I can to keep my apartment.”

Similar stories surface across the country on social media, as tenants face eviction and receive muddled explanations in bureaucratese. Kristy Milligan of Westside CARES calls the system a “gauntlet of bureaucratic processes,” a sentiment echoed by advocates nationwide who report tenants navigating months of paperwork only to face landlord rejections or unit shortages.

The failure of housing programs to deliver housing amounts to a statewide and national disgrace.

What we have doesn’t work. It wastes taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars. Even worse, that waste imposes and prolongs misery on those who have the least.

It’s past time to disrupt the Free Housing Bureaucratic Complex and establish a system that works for the poor. Establish a system that streamlines and expedites assistance to those who really need it, which should not take days, weeks, months or years. That means ridding these systems of personnel and policies putting process over people with a sense of arrogant indifference no civilized society should not tolerate. As people suffer, reform cannot wait.

The Gazette Editorial Board