New York City sent letters to more than 15,000 individuals and families on Thursday warning them they could no longer expect the government rent subsidy that helped them move out of homeless shelters. Officials said they believed the cuts would force 4,400 families back into the shelter system.

The city blamed the move on proposed state budget cuts that are set to slice tens of millions of dollars from the program, but opponents accused the city of playing fast with the lives of its most vulnerable residents, canceling a program that has drawn mixed reviews, in a bid to spark pressure on state officials to restore the funds ahead of an April 1 budget deadline.

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US Senator Scott Brown, a Massachusetts Republican, is urging President Obama and congressional leaders from both parties in a letter to reconsider spending priorities at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Brown wrote that homelessness in the Bay State and across the nation is up due to the foreclosure crisis, and noted that families with children are the fastest-growing segment of new homeless.

“HUD Programs provide rental assistance for low income citizens and other homelessness programs,” Brown wrote. “These rental programs are vital to Massachusetts and should be protected at a time when the Massachusetts unemployment rate is about eight percent.”

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The federal government's multi-agency approach to help the homeless is often confused, according to a recently released report that catalogues the hundreds of different ways the government squanders taxes through waste, overlap, fragmentation and bureaucracy.

The Government Accountability Office report found that in 2009, federal agencies spent about $2.9 billion on more than 20 programs that targeted homelessness. If that money were to be targeted toward the building of homes, at say, $200,000 per home, it could theoretically produce 145,000 houses.

"Take that money directly and give them sort of a voucher so they can go get housing on their own, or get some mental health benefits," Brian Darling, director of government studies at the Heritage Foundation suggested. "But the way it is now when you have all of these different government agencies administering the same program, you have government waste."

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