A broad coalition of local governments and nonprofit organizations, including Crossroads Rhode Island and Youth Pride, have challenged the Trump-Vance administration’s latest attempt to disrupt federal funding for people trying to exit homelessness. Although the court had previously halted unlawful restrictions on federal homelessness funding, the administration is once again making changes that will kick people out of permanent housing and back onto the streets.
In a supplemental filing today in National Alliance to End Homelessness et al v. Turner et al, the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), Crossroads Rhode Island, Youth Pride, Inc., the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC), as well as the County of Santa Clara, Calif., King County, Wash., Boston, Mass., Cambridge, Mass., Nashville, Tenn., and Tucson, Ariz. are asking a federal court in Rhode Island to stop the implementation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) for FY 2026 Continuum of Care (CoC) grants – the nation’s more than $4 billion program to support efforts to end homelessness. The new NOFO repeats a series of fatal legal flaws that caused U.S. District Court Judge Mary McElroy to stop the implementation of the NOFO in 2025.
Today’s filing continues a saga that has seen nonprofit organizations triumph repeatedly as they have challenged Trump-Vance administration efforts to unlawfully weaponize federal funding. For years and through multiple presidential administrations, the CoC Program has helped provide the necessary resources for local governments and organizations to fund permanent housing projects for veterans, seniors, people with disabilities, and individuals and families with children experiencing homelessness. It has always been HUD's obligation to release these resources in a timely manner through a lawful CoC Program competition NOFO. However, HUD attempted to radically upend this critical program with a FY 2025 NOFO that threatened to push nearly 200,000 Americans into homelessness.
The coalition filing today’s supplemental complaint took legal action to stop the NOFO issued in 2025, and in December 2025, Judge McElroy granted preliminary relief, which temporarily blocked the administration’s attempts to implement the unlawful and unreasonable restrictions that sought to shift funding away from proven solutions to homelessness. Eventually, Congress stepped in and required HUD to renew all existing grants for FY 2025. HUD still has not finalized those FY 2025 awards that by now are long overdue, leaving projects without funding and further disrupting the nation’s flagship homelessness response program.
The new NOFO release for 2026 bears many similarities to the version the court already determined likely to be unlawful. Without authorization, the FY 2026 NOFO sets aside a whopping $1.3 billion – nearly one-third of available funds – for new projects only, despite Congress’s command that appropriated funds be available to renew existing projects, and despite the fact that this set-aside guarantees that significant numbers of existing projects will be ineligible for renewal, no matter how effective. Worse, this massive set-aside is earmarked principally for unproven strategies, to the detriment of permanent housing that Congress directed HUD to prioritize. The NOFO additionally forces grantees to agree to comply with requirements that have little to nothing to do with the CoC program – including by committing to adhere to executive orders that, among other things, seek to eradicate lawful diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; reject transgender and nonbinary individuals’ identities; and coerce jurisdictions to help with federal immigration enforcement.
“It is as unfortunate as it is necessary that our organizations must return to court to ensure that the Trump administration follows the law,” said Lynette Labinger, cooperating attorney for the ACLU Foundation of Rhode Island. “HUD continues to slow walk its obligations for this year and to create barriers contrary to the law for next year’s funding. In the meantime, our organizations’ ability to deliver critical services to the housing insecure communities is undermined and our most vulnerable population continues to suffer. This is why we return to court.”
“Once again, we are forced to return to court to protect federal homelessness funding,” said Amy Romero, Chief Legal Counsel of Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island. “We are proud to represent this broad coalition in seeking relief so that communities here in Rhode Island and across the country can continue providing lifesaving housing services to those most in need.”
Democracy Forward and the ACLU Foundation of Rhode Island represent the coalition of nonprofit organizations in the matter; the National Homelessness Law Center represents NAEH and NLIHC; Public Rights Project represents the cities of Boston, Cambridge, King County, Nashville, and Tucson; and Santa Clara County represents itself. The Lawyers’ Committee for Rhode Island represents all plaintiffs.
Plaintiff and co-counsel quotes regarding the original filing are available here. See plaintiff quotes about today’s filing here.
