The Molasky family late last month hosted the grand opening of their 16th senior affordable housing community, a 195-unit complex near Silverado Ranch with high-class amenities not usually provided on-site to people living on low or fixed incomes.

Getting it done took more than just private investment, however. Every level of government contributed. Ovation Property Management’s new Heirloom by Pebble development utilized the sale of federal tax credits, took money from the state’s housing trust fund and used a Clark County program paid for by Washington, D.C.

“Collaboration is key to solving challenging issues like affordable housing,” Ovation founder Alan Molasky said. “We couldn’t do it without critical support from government and agency partners who share our passion.”

But Nevada and Clark County may soon be forced into acting more independently on affordable housing developments.

President Donald Trump’s budget request for the 2026 fiscal year would completely restructure housing affordability programs, slashing them and pushing much of what’s left down to the states through block grants. Experts acknowledge that the 43% cut in rental assistance programs could have devastating effects, but they aren’t yet sure what the proposal means for Nevada.

Included on the chopping block is the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which helped fund the Ovation project. The House Committee on Appropriations’ version will have its version of the legislation heard July 14 before a subcommittee.

Each dollar pulled away from federal support is “another senior who won’t have a place to lay their head at night,” Nevada Treasurer Zach Conine, a Democrat running for attorney general, told the Sun at the affordable housing community’s grand opening.

Clark County Commissioner Michael Naft said that while some malign federal employees as wasteful bureaucrats, there’s a lot of work they do to get housing projects like Ovation’s off the ground.

A lack of federal staffers putting pressure on the Bureau of Land Management, which needed to convey land to the county for the Ovation development, extended the project’s timeline by years, Naft said.

“People make a difference. And when people are motivated and working hard and efficiently, you can get projects like this done for cheaper and quicker,” Naft said, adding later that “it’ll be hard to pick up the pieces” if the proposed budget goes through, “but Clark County stands ready.”

In Conine’s conversations with the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, also involved in the project, and developers, he said Nevada maximizing its federal dollars for housing is of utmost importance right now.

Nevada is short almost 80,000 homes for “extremely” low-income renters, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Over 70% of low-income earners in the state are “cost burdened,” meaning that housing costs make up more than 30% of their income, the coalition found. Nearly half of middle-income renters fell into the same category.

Conine said the state was willing to work with any county to bring more housing to people. How much they’ll be able to collaborate with the federal government, however, will depend on their staffing and programs staying funded, he said.

“We’ll continue doing everything we can to pull every lever, press every button, call every person, cajole every vote to make sure that seniors have places to live that are as nice as Heirloom by Ovation,” Conine said.

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner called the changes in Trump’s proposal a “reimagining of how the federal government addresses affordable housing,” highlighting the flexibility it gives states and localities.

The proposal “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 in a statement.

One piece of the Ovation property’s financing that may be boosted by Republicans comes in the form of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. The “One Big Beautiful Bill,” newly signed into law, extends a boost in the allocation of 9% tax credits through the program.

Either way, Nevada Housing Coalition Director Maurice Page said the massive cuts in Trump’s budget proposal would directly affect Nevada’s working families, seniors and people with disabilities who rely on rental assistance.

Systems need to be in place now to continue supporting locals struggling with housing, but Trump’s proposal brings everything “back to the drawing board,” Page said.

“We’re going to hope that having these block grants and trying to create these funding sources will ultimately help individuals and families be able to survive, but we don’t know,” he said. “That’s the unknown and what’s scary about the situation.”

Nicholas Irwin, research director at UNLV’s Lied Center for Real Estate, is similarly unsure about how the new federal budget will affect Nevada, adding that one large issue could be rising inequality in how funding is allocated.

Putting aside the drastic drop in federal dollars, the block grant system has trade-offs in efficiency, Irwin said. The effect of a program might be greater if it’s centralized, but there also could be potential savings from direct control.

The block grants take “away some uniformity in how everything is going to be applied,” he said. “Not all states may necessarily do things the same way … but this could lead to fewer resources getting to the right people as states make determinations of what’s going to happen.”

The proposal also includes a potential two-year limit on rental assistance for able-bodied adults younger than 65, though the National Low Income Housing Coalition notes there is currently no further explanation on how that would work.

While the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority has been mum on the proposal, Los Angeles County’s development authority is already sounding the alarm. It noted that some populations included in the two-year limit, such as veterans, were still vulnerable.

The proposed funding reduction could adversely affect ongoing voucher renewals for those who depend on government assistance for stable housing, the organization said. At the same time, the Los Angeles County Development Authority said the cuts may stifle affordable housing projects.

“This is policy that reinforces inequality,” Page said about the overall proposal. “It’s rewarding the few at the expense of very many. Nevada families, at the end of the day, are already struggling to keep up with housing costs, and this will add weight to the sinking boat.”