Advocates Sue Trump’s HUD to Protect Housing for 97,000 People

The Second Lawsuit in Two Years Challenges Changes Advocates Say Would Gut Evidence-Based Housing Programs Nationwide

A coalition of 10 governments and nonprofits has sued the Trump administration, challenging its latest attempt to politicize funding for homeless services.

The lawsuit, filed in the District Court for the District of Rhode Island, seeks to overturn recent changes the Trump administration made to the most recent Continuum of Care Notice of Funding Opportunity. This document outlines how nonprofits and governments can access the largest pool of funding for homeless services.

The administration has proposed setting aside nearly one-third of the nearly $4 billion funding pool for new projects only and placing new restrictions on funding for permanent housing. Those are two priority areas that Congress has directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development to prioritize.

The coalition that sued HUD estimates the changes could result in 97,000 people being forced back into homelessness. They claimed in the lawsuit that the changes made are yet another attempt to “defund strategies Congress identified as effective and to unjustifiably withhold funding from existing projects while also arbitrarily and capriciously pushing approaches that are ineffective and even harmful.”

It was filed by organizations such as the National Alliance to End Homelessness, National Homelessness Law Center, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, as well as local governments from Boston, Cambridge, Martin Luther King Jr. County, Nashville, Santa Clara, and Tucson.

“The work to end homelessness is not and never should be partisan,” Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, said in a statement. “Communities deserve a federal homelessness response that is lawfully responsive to their needs and free from political interference.”

A Pattern of Interference

This is not the first time that advocates have had to fight back against proposed changes to HUD’s Continuum of Care grant program. In 2025, advocates sued the Trump administration over proposed changes to the program that would have capped expenditures on permanent supportive housing at 30% of the total funding an organization received.

For comparison, about 90% of all Continuum of Care grant funds are spent on existing permanent supportive housing projects, meaning the money literally keeps the lights on and the doors open at these buildings.

Altogether, estimates suggested that the previously proposed changes would have stripped about 170,000 people of their housing.

The Trump administration also proposed prioritizing funding for religious organizations under the guise of alleged religious discrimination by the Biden administration. Trump’s HUD claimed in a more than 500-page report published last year that the Biden administration’s rules prohibiting sexual and gender discrimination by faith-based housing providers were a violation of religious liberty.

A federal judge in Rhode Island found those arguments unconvincing and ordered HUD to restore the funding that it has attempted to restrict. The judge also blasted Trump’s HUD for attempting to inject chaos into the homeless services system with its move.

“The constant churn and chaos seem to be the point,” District Judge Mary McElroy wrote in her opinion.

What the New Rules Would Actually Do

The coalition argued in its new lawsuit that the new changes proposed by Trump’s HUD could be nearly as disastrous as the last attempt to rewrite the Continuum of Care grant rules. For instance, they noted that the new rules would force communities to abandon evidence-based strategies for addressing homelessness, like utilizing permanent supportive housing.

The changes would also force service providers to comply with executive orders that seek to eradicate diversity programs, reject transgender and nonbinary individuals’ rights, and coerce service providers into helping with federal immigration enforcement, according to the lawsuit.

Toby Merrill, director of litigation for the Public Rights Project, said in a statement that the proposed changes would disrupt years of relationships that service providers have worked to build with people in need.

“These unlawful changes threaten that work and put vulnerable people at greater risk of homelessness,” Merrill said. “HUD must follow the law instead of trying to rewrite a program Congress created and to replace evidence-based solutions with political ideology.”

Progress Made, Progress Threatened

The lawsuit was filed at a time when homelessness across the U.S. declined for the first time in nearly a decade. According to HUD’s latest report to Congress, more than 745,000 people were homeless on a single night in 2025, which represents a 3% year-over-year decrease.

Advocates have claimed that the decrease was the result of the Biden administration injecting billions of dollars into the homeless services system. For instance, the Biden administration created the “All Inside” program, which provided funding to nearly a dozen cities to expand their rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing goals. Altogether, the All In funding helped cities across the country reduce their unsheltered homeless populations and develop new ways of providing services to them.

That progress is now being threatened by the Trump HUD’s proposed changes to the Continuum of Care grant, advocates warned.

“Housing is not a political reward, it is the foundation from which people rebuild their lives,” Renee Willis, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said in a statement. “The administration cannot ignore the law or decades of evidence in pursuit of an ideological agenda that puts more people at risk of homelessness. Every decision about federal homelessness funding has real human consequences.”

How You Can Help

Now is not the time to be silent about homelessness in the United States or anywhere else. Homeless people deserve safe and sanitary housing just as much as those who can afford rent or a mortgage.

Poverty and homelessness are both policy choices, not personal failures. That’s why we need you to contact your officials and tell them you support legislation that:

Streamlines the development of affordable housing

Reduces barriers for people experiencing homelessness to enter permanent housing

Bolsters government response to homelessness

Together, we can end homelessness.