The Trump administration suddenly reversed course Dec. 10 on a planned shift in housing policy that would have sent hundreds of thousands of children and adults into homelessness during the winter months, according to advocacy groups.
The move came just hours ahead of a court hearing scheduled to consider a temporary restraining order for nonprofit groups and local governments that sued to block restrictions to the $3.5 billion Continuum of Care Program.
Scott Turner
Trump’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development is a Southern Baptist pastor, Scott Turner of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas.
The last-minute withdrawal by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development represents the latest in a long “string of examples of government lawyers in court trying to defend the indefensible,” according to Democracy Forward, one of the legal groups representing plaintiffs in National Alliance to End Homelessness v. HUD.
“The broad coalition is continuing to challenge the Trump-Vance administration’s dangerous policies and intentional chaos, which is putting people at risk of becoming homeless, in a preliminary injunction hearing scheduled for next week.”
But the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said it reserved the right to revise its plan to reduce the share of funding for long-term, permanent housing solutions in favor of shorter-term programs experts consider less effective.
A HUD spokesperson announced the agency will quickly re-issue the Notice of Funding Opportunity, Politico reported. “The department intends to make resources available in a timely manner so grantees with measurable results can continue to support vulnerable populations. The department remains fully committed to making long overdue reforms to its homelessness assistance programs.”
The agency’s plan would have cut permanent housing programs by more than half.
The agency’s plan would have cut permanent housing programs by more than half, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Dec. 1 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island.
The roughly 87% of funding currently allocated for long-term solutions would have been reduced to 30% under the government’s plan and likely would have resulted in communities resorting to transitional housing, emergency shelters and less-effective approaches to homelessness.
The proposed changes to the program “signal a fundamental shift in federal homelessness policy away from effective, humane approaches and toward wasteful cruelty and criminalization,” the organization warned. “Moreover, this administration’s actions threaten to distract from real solutions to the affordable housing and homelessness crisis: long-term, large-scale investments in the programs and policies that help people find and maintain safe, stable, affordable housing.”
Other plaintiffs in the action include the cities of Boston, San Francisco and Tucson and nonprofits such as Crossroads Rhode Island, Youth Pride and the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
HUD’s move, “which could push hundreds of thousands of Americans into homelessness, is being done on a compressed timeline, and throwing the entire program, meant to ensure stability for programs and the people who rely on them, into chaos,” the Alliance said.
The administration faces a second lawsuit filed recently by a coalition of 19 state attorneys general and two governors.
“Communities across the country depend on Continuum of Care funds to provide housing and other resources to our most vulnerable neighbors,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said. “These funds help keep tens of thousands of people from sleeping on the streets every night. I will not allow this administration to cut off these funds and put vital housing and support services at risk.”
The HUD proposal is yet another administration effort “to weaponize the federal government against the American people,” Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman said. “This unlawful action by the Trump-Vance administration threatens to push hundreds of thousands of people out of housing and back to the streets.”