DOGE Shut Down This Agency. Now Its Employees Are Back on the Payroll With Nothing To Do.

Shutting down the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness is the right thing to do, but the Trump administration's approach allowed a dozen federal employees to collect paychecks for a year.

A federal agency that coordinates government homelessness programs was supposedly shuttered by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the early days of the second Trump administration.

But the staff at the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) were never actually fired. Instead, they were placed on paid administrative leave for several months. Then they were quietly rehired, even though the council has not held a meeting since December 2024 and has been given nothing to do.

"As of May 2026, USICH had 10 full-time employees and a part-time executive director," the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported in an audit published last week. Staff at the USICH told the GAO that "since their return, they had not received direction from the Council or the executive director on homelessness policies or priorities to guide their work or help them perform USICH's statutory duties and functions."

After the USICH staff was placed on paid leave last year, the council's office in Washington, D.C., was cleaned out and its equipment was returned to the federal General Services Administration. However, a federal judge ruled last year that the Trump administration could not shut down the USICH without congressional authorization and ordered the staff to return to work. The staff returned from leave in December and purchased new equipment, the GAO reported.

Since then, the staff seems to have had little to do. "USICH officials told us all employees were teleworking as of February 17, 2026," the GAO reported. "As of September 2026, USICH staff said they had not received direction from the Council or the executive director on federal homelessness policies or priorities to guide their work and help perform USICH's statutory duties and functions."

The USICH's official government website seems to support the GAO's conclusions. The agency's newsletter has not been updated since January 2025. Its Twitter account has been silent since November 2024—particularly telling, given the Trump administration's aggressive use of social media.

Reason's calls and emails to the USICH this week went unreturned, with one exception: An email to Makese Motley, who is still listed as the council's director of legislative affairs, generated an automated response saying that Motley left that position in August and providing an alternative email address. Contacted at that address, Motley declined to comment on the GAO report, citing "the confidentiality and nature of my current job."

The Trump administration has proposed abolishing the USICH in 2027. The council's 2026 budget request to Congress sought $250,000 to "conduct an orderly closeout of USICH, which includes sufficient funding for limited closeout activities and payroll liabilities."

If the USICH is slouching toward oblivion, that would be in keeping with Congress' original intent for the agency—which was supposed to be a temporary effort when it was established in 1987, only to have its planned termination extended several times, the GAO notes.

The Trump administration's attempt to shut down the USICH in 2025 was met with outcry. "The U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness has been vital in shaping effective policy to end homelessness," Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a statement to NPR in April 2025.

That's a questionable claim. As City Journal noted in 2025, shortly after the Trump administration placed the council's staff on administrative leave, the USICH oversaw a large increase in homelessness during its tenure. While it was intended to reduce overlapping governmental efforts in that space, the USICH played a key role in pushing policies that have not worked—such as reducing the number of transitional housing programs, which resulted in more homeless people living on the street.

Regardless of how you feel about the USICH, the GAO report details an unsatisfying situation. Paying federal bureaucrats not to work won't save taxpayer money and won't make the government more efficient or effective.

Unfortunately, that's happened a lot. Federal employees were paid $9.5 billion not to work during 2025, in large part because of the Trump administration's efforts to shrink the federal workforce and reduce spending, the GAO reported last month.

Shutting down the USICH seems like the right thing to do, but this once again points to the problems with DOGE's approach to cutting government. Killing useless government programs requires congressional action—or, in this case, requires Congress simply not reauthorizing the USICH when it is set to expire in 2028.