The U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals has again blocked the Trump administration from enacting drastic changes to homelessness funding.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in November announced plans to slash grant opportunities for a category of homeless shelter known as permanent supportive housing. Advocates had feared more than 1,400 formerly homeless Arizonans could have quickly ended up back on the street as a result.
Permanent supportive housing is expensive, but critical, said Tim Burch, human services director for Tempe and co-chair for the Maricopa Regional Continuum of Care.
“It’s for individuals that are the most medically fragile — people that have been on the street for a year or longer, have multiple physical or mental ailments,” Burch said. “They get prioritized for housing because they are the most vulnerable.”
HUD’s Continuum of Care program is the largest resource for federal homelessness assistance funding. The Maricopa Regional Continuum of Care had been putting nearly 90% of its HUD grants toward permanent supportive housing. But in the November announcement, HUD said it would now allow no more than 30% of funds to go toward these permanent units. And HUD gave service providers just weeks to revise their grant applications.
“Which did put the whole of the system in a bit of a scramble," Burch said.
Arizona was among 21 states that sued the Trump administration in response to the sudden changes. Several homelessness nonprofits also filed a separate lawsuit.
A U.S. District Court Judge in December sided with the states and nonprofits, barring HUD from implementing the new rules. And on April 1, the First Circuit Court of Appeals denied the Trump administration’s request to stay the lower court’s ruling.
The Circuit Court judges wrote that HUD’s proposed funding changes would be “destabilizing and disastrous.”
The legal fights are ongoing, but the latest ruling frees up funds that had run out for several Valley homelessness providers in March, Burch said.
“The good news is that the programs that were currently funded to provide services this year have been directed by the court to receive that full funding,” Burch said.
And Burch said when applications open for next year’s grants, it now appears HUD will have to allow at least 60% of funding to be used for permanent supportive housing.
“That still means we’ll have upwards of 1,000 households that will have to transition to other types of housing models, but it’s a much more achievable goal than the abrupt and system-wrecking change that was originally proposed,” Burch said.
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