The families are gone. The windows are boarded up. The front doors are replaced by cinder-block walls.

Poe Homes, the city’s oldest public housing project, is slated for redevelopment. The Housing Authority of Baltimore City spent years crafting a proposal for a $50 million federal grant to replace it with a mixed-income community.

The plan was to submit the grant application this year. Then Donald Trump became president.

The president and his top adviser, Elon Musk, are slashing the federal budget. And the new administration is especially skeptical of housing grants and programs that finance the redevelopment of distressed communities such as Poe Homes, which is in West Baltimore’s Poppleton neighborhood.

The process to redevelop Poe Homes, home to some of the city’s poorest residents for more than eight decades, formally began in 2018. That’s when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded Baltimore’s housing authority a $1.3 million planning grant as part of its Choice Neighborhoods program.

Years of community meetings, slideshow presentations and design renderings followed — necessary steps toward applying for the next phase of Choice Neighborhoods, a $50 million grant. Last year, the authority began moving out the 288 households of Poe Homes to get ready for demolition.

Choice Neighborhoods is HUD’s attempt to replace public housing projects with diverse, mixed-income communities. President Barack Obama’s administration began the program in 2010 to award federal support to distressed communities that submit plans for redevelopment that include new housing, businesses, schools and nonprofit services.

Federal funds can signal a development’s legitimacy to private developers. Without HUD’s involvement in the affordable housing side of the equation, mixed-income projects are often difficult to finance.

A $30 million Choice Neighborhoods grant in 2017 jump-started the construction of hundreds of apartment units and homes near downtown Baltimore and the Inner Harbor. The $1 billion redevelopment of Perkins Somerset Oldtown fills in a dilapidated neighborhood adjacent to Little Italy, Fells Point and Harbor East and the area around the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Arlisa Anderson, who oversees Choice Neighborhoods initiatives for Baltimore’s housing authority, promised Poppleton residents a similar transformation for Poe Homes at a December meeting. A predominantly Black community, Poppleton has suffered decades of blight, disinvestment and broken promises of revitalization. City officials have long considered Poe Homes a key piece of the redevelopment puzzle.

But now Choice Neighborhoods is on the chopping block. Trump wants deep cuts at HUD and specifically proposed ending Choice Neighborhoods grants during his first term.

At a neighborhood meeting last month, a city employee delivered the news bluntly.

“The new administration of the federal government wants to close HUD altogether,” said Nick Chupein, the city planner for Poppleton. “We’re in a really tight spot in terms of getting that money.”

Annapolis also was in line for Choice Neighborhoods money to redevelop a housing project called Harbour House/Eastport Terrace into a mixed-income community.

That will be seriously delayed as its federal grant prospects grow dimmer, Housing Authority of the City of Annapolis Executive Director and CEO Melissa Maddox Evans said.

HUD is under duress on multiple fronts. As many as half of its employees may be eliminated through the Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, the Washington Post reported. That would likely slow or stop the administration of numerous anti-poverty, mortgage lending, inspection and social services programs across the country.

Those involved in providing housing and services for the country’s lowest-income and highest-need households said these programs provide demonstrable public benefit. They add more housing to neighborhoods, boost small businesses in under-resourced areas and reduce the strain on hospital emergency departments by keeping people healthy and in their homes.

For Poe Homes, the Housing Authority of Baltimore City is partnering with a private developer, AHC Inc.

The company’s vice president, Mary Claire Davis, acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding federal funds, but she said the organization is committed to moving forward, with demolition slated this year.

“It’s unprecedented times,” Davis said. “We’re all kind of living day by day in this new environment.”

Ingrid Antonio, a spokesperson for HABC, said in an email that the Poe Homes plan would not be impacted by a loss of HUD funds but did not elaborate.

City Councilmember John T. Bullock, who represents the neighborhood, said the city and state may have to get “more creative” in how they pull Poe Homes’ financing package together — and be open to the possibility of it taking several years longer than anticipated.

“Standing still is really not an option,” he said. “There needs to be some forward progress.”

Across the country, communities are pausing or even shelving new housing developments, said Kim Johnson, policy manager at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Whether people realize it or not, the federal government is the reason millions of Americans, especially the poorest among us, have a roof over their heads, Johnson said.

“The market is simply never going to be able to build, maintain and operate housing that is deeply affordable enough for people who are paid the lowest wages,” Johnson said. “You can’t squeeze blood from a stone.”

But Howard Husock, a housing expert at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said federal spending cuts may be “a blessing in disguise.”

For too long, he said, governments have tried forcing neighborhoods to fit their vision, he said.

Think of Poe Homes as a blank slate, he said. Does it make sense for Poppleton to put almost 600 housing units there? Or is there a better use for that land? Husock said local leaders should forget about federal grant money and let the private market decide what to put there.

At the community meeting last month, Sonia Eaddy, president of Poppleton Now, said many residents did not like the redevelopment plans for Poe Homes, particularly doubling the number of housing units.

Throughout the six-year planning process, residents who spoke at community meetings felt ignored, Eaddy said.

“The Poe Homes never had height and density,” Eaddy said. “We wanted to keep it resembling what was there.”

Poe Homes can trace its roots to a working-class community that sprang up around a cotton factory in the 1840s. By the 1930s, those homes were dilapidated and the federal government was bankrolling local public housing projects.

The city demolished the community and built Poe Homes.

Major infrastructure problems cropped up in recent years. A 2019 water main break meant residents had no running water for five days. A gas leak in 2021 led to a two-day shutoff.

According to public data, Poe Homes had 424 residents as of 2023, almost all of them Black. One-third were disabled. The average annual household income was $13,200. The average household had lived in Poe Homes for more than 12 years.

Today, nearly every family is gone. The playground is empty. The dumpsters are full.

Shantelle Jackson is one of the last residents, living in a unit wedged between vacants. She said she has lived in Poe Homes for 13 years.

When asked if she would miss Poe Homes, Jackson said, “Hell no.”

There’s too much crime here, she said.

“I’m glad to leave.”