The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling temporarily blocking the federal government from limiting the scope of subsidized housing grants designed to help cities and states address homelessness.
“As the Trump-Vance administration continues to weaponize federal funding and attempts to hold hostage support for people experiencing homelessness — including families, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities — we are relieved that the appeals court has left the order we earned late last year in place,” said a statement from one of two groups of plaintiffs that sued the Department of Housing and Urban Development Dec. 1.
National Alliance to End Homelessness et al. v. HUD contends abrupt changes to the federal Continuum of Care program would cause irreparable harm to the plaintiff organizations and their clients who benefit from funded services.
A U.S. district judge in Rhode Island agreed and later that month granted a stay pending the outcome of federal litigation. Now a Boston-based appellate court concurred that allowing HUD to implement the changes would endanger hundreds of housing projects and threaten thousands with homelessness.
A Boston-based appellate court concurred that allowing HUD to implement the changes would endanger hundreds of housing projects and threaten thousands with homelessness.
“The record here is replete with evidence that dissolving the injunctions would result in wide-ranging and severe consequences as the litigation plays out,” the April 1 appellate ruling said. “And those harms would not be readily curable after the fact; indeed, a final judgment in the plaintiffs’ favor would offer little solace to those residents who may be forced into homelessness in the interim.”
It didn’t help HUD’s case that it did not contest the multitude of evidence the proposed changes would be “destabilizing and disastrous” to plaintiffs’ employees, clients, partners and contractors, the court explained. “HUD has not made a strong showing that it is likely to succeed on the merits of its appeal challenging the district court’s denial of its motion to dissolve. And for that reason alone, its stay request is doomed.”
In the Trump administration, HUD is led by a Southern Baptist pastor who came from the staff of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas.
Democracy Forward and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Rhode Island represented the nonprofit coalition in the case. The National Homelessness Law Center represented the National Alliance to End Homelessness National Low Income Housing Coalition. The Public Rights Project represented the cities of Boston, Cambridge, Nashville and Tucson as well as King County, Wash. Santa Clara County and San Francisco are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
“Unhoused and housing-insecure youth are one of the most vulnerable populations in our communities,” according to plaintiff Youth Pride. “These changes to HUD’s rapid rehousing program will leave more youth susceptible to exploitation and dangerous conditions and do nothing to make communities safer for anyone.”
Tony LoPresti
The administration’s proposal is an effort to place politics above the needs of the vulnerable, Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti said. “HUD’s new grant rules would effectively defund permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing programs across the nation, eliminating proven tools that help residents exit homelessness sustainably.”
Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman condemned the administration for using HUD and the housing grant program against the American people. “This unlawful action by the Trump-Vance administration threatens to push hundreds of thousands of people out of housing and back to the streets.”
The administration didn’t fare much better in its attempt to freeze more than $10 billion in family assistance and child care assistance funding to states disliked by President Donald Trump, Democracy Forward added.
The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a temporary injunction April 1 preventing the Department of Health and Human Services from targeting programs in California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York as litigation continues.
Skye Perryman
“Over the past year, the Trump-Vance administration has repeatedly boasted about terminating federal grants in retribution because the recipients were located in ‘blue states,’” Democracy Forward explained. “Consistent with that pattern, administration officials, including those at the Administration for Children and Families, have used vague and unsubstantiated allegations of ‘fraud’ in five Democratic-led states as a pretext to target those states and their residents.”
A group of small-business membership organizations and labor groups filed AFSCME v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services et al in January in response to HUD’s proposal to eliminate those states from the Child Care and Development Fund, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Social Services Block Grant program.
“Once again, we took the Trump-Vance administration to court for trying to play politics with the lives of working families — and won,” Perryman said. “The Trump-Vance administration attempted to withhold billions in funding Congress already approved, threatening child care providers, forcing parents out of work, and destabilizing local economies, all to punish communities it disagrees with.”