Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

15. Department of Housing and Urban Development · Notable · Needs Congress

End Housing First directives for Continuum of Care grantees

Blocked

516 15. Department of Housing and Urban Development

“HUD should implement administrative changes in regulation and guidance and seek statutory authority to end all Housing First directives of Continuum of Care (CoC) grantees and contract homelessness providers in addition to establishing restrictions on local Housing First policies where HUD grant funds are used.”

What has happened

  1. Blocked

    HUD began the notice and comment the court found missing. Its Notice of Research Justifying Additional Incentives for Certain Activities To Reduce Homelessness proposes, under section 428(d)(2)(C), to incent five activities in future CoC competitions. They are transitional housing with services aimed at employment income and behavioral health; supportive services aimed at employment, healthcare and substance-use and mental-health treatment; "supportive service participation agreements"; drug-free and sober recovery housing; and coordination with law enforcement. It traces the "systematic defunding" of transitional housing since 2013 to Housing First, and says it is published "to reinforce its ability to establish the set-aside". Comments are due 2026-10-13. Participation agreements and treatment-first housing, rewarded in the CoC scoring, are the opposite of the no-preconditions model this Quote asks HUD to end for CoC grantees. It is a proposal to cure the procedural defect. The 2026 NOFO remains vacated, so the item stays `blocked`.

  2. Blocked

    The FY2026 NOFO was set aside. In State of Washington v. HUD and National Alliance to End Homelessness v. HUD the District of Rhode Island held that HUD's $1.3 billion set-aside for transitional housing and supportive-services-only projects, its "attempt to deemphasize its Housing First approach", was an incentive under 42 U.S.C. 11386b(d)(2)(C). That provision requires public notice and comment, so the court set aside "the 2026 NOFO in its entirety" under 5 U.S.C. 706(2)(D). It refused a permanent injunction, observing that HUD "may attempt to issue yet another NOFO that contains these conditions after undergoing the requisite notice-and-comment process". The court denied HUD a stay pending appeal on 2026-08-13. HUD's emergency stay motions in the First Circuit (Nos. 26-1922 and 26-1923) were fully briefed by 2026-09-04, and the court had not ruled by 2026-09-11. The administrative change the Quote asks for is stopped by an order in force.

  3. Attempted

    HUD published a fresh $4.04 billion FY2026 CoC NOFO on terms that again reject Housing First — "the 'housing first' experiment failed Americans by warehousing the vulnerable without results" — with a $1.3 billion new-project pot prioritizing transitional housing and supportive services. Awards were set for December 2026, so no grantee had been funded on the new terms; no allowlisted source shows the FY2026 NOFO itself enjoined.

  4. Blocked

    The First Circuit denied HUD's motion for a stay pending appeal and the injunctions stayed in force. The same day the administration answered the Quote's second half — "seek statutory authority" — in the FY2027 Budget, which asks Congress to eliminate the Continuum of Care program outright and replace it with a $4 billion Emergency Solutions Grant program for "emergency and transitional housing assistance", naming Housing First as "a profound failure". A President's Budget is a formal administration request, so the statutory half is asked but not granted; the injunctions still govern the administrative half.

  5. Blocked

    The District of Rhode Island entered preliminary injunctions in both suits barring HUD from rescinding the FY2024–25 NOFO, from implementing the challenged conditions, and from giving effect to any further action to rescind or replace that NOFO — which HUD conceded reached the replacement December NOFO carrying the same anti-Housing-First terms. The administrative change the Quote asks for was stopped.

  6. Attempted

    HUD made the administrative change the Quote asks for. The FY2025 Continuum of Care Notice of Funding Opportunity rescinded the FY2024–25 NOFO, cut the renewal cap for Tier 1 projects — overwhelmingly permanent housing — from 90 to 30 percent, required 70 percent of projects to be re-competed, and added treatment-enrolment criteria; HUD said roughly 90 percent of the previous four years' awards had gone to "the failed 'Housing First' ideology". No grantee had yet been funded on the new terms, and HUD withdrew the NOFO an hour before the temporary-restraining-order hearing on 2025-12-08.

  7. Attempted

    Executive Order 14321 § 5(a) directed the Secretaries of HUD and HHS to take action including "ending support for 'housing first' policies that deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency". A directive to the department; no CoC grantee's terms had changed.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • This is the p. 516 endnote from which #1420 (printed p. 509, “end Housing First policies at HUD”) also draws; the two carry the same instruments. The difference measured here is the Quote’s own two halves — administrative changes in regulation and guidance, and seeking statutory authority. The second is answered by the FY2027 Budget’s proposal to abolish the CoC program, which #1420 does not need.

  • No bill of the 119th Congress would end Housing First directives. H.R. 577 (Treatment and Homelessness Housing Integration Act), S. 2234 (Reducing Homelessness Through Program Reform Act) and H.R. 8878 (Incentivizing Local Solutions to Homelessness Act) were all referred to committee. The one homelessness provision that was enacted runs the other way: § 503 of P.L. 119-101 lets recipients waive the McKinney-Vento expenditure cap on the strength of local need, and requires the Secretary to deny a waiver to any recipient that relocates people without providing shelter, rapid rehousing, transitional housing or permanent housing.

  • The litigation trail is longer than the Evidence above and is recorded on #1420. The FY2026 NOFO was challenged in July 2026 and set aside on 2026-08-07. See the closure note below.

  • Reviewed 2026-09-11 — the incentives notice, and the vacatur it revealed. HUD’s Notice of Research Justifying Additional Incentives for Certain Activities To Reduce Homelessness (FR 2026-18555) was read in full on federalregister.gov. It names Housing First throughout and proposes five CoC incentives against it (the 2026-09-11 event). It also discloses what the record had missed. On 2026-08-07 the District of Rhode Island had set aside the FY2026 NOFO “in its entirety” for want of the notice and comment 42 U.S.C. 11386b(d)(2)(C) requires. The Memorandum and Order (ECF No. 41 in 26-cv-439, deciding both cases) was read from RECAP. The two dockets show HUD’s stay denied on 2026-08-13 and its appeals (1st Cir. Nos. 26-1922 and 26-1923) docketed on 2026-08-14. CourtListener’s search, which is updated live, shows no First Circuit ruling on the emergency stay motions through the last entry of 2026-09-04. So this item was blocked from 2026-08-07. The open question had been whether the notice was an event at an unchanged attempted; the rung below it had already moved.

  • EO 14332 grant-process sweep (2026-09-29). Executive Order 14332 (2025-08-07) puts every agency’s funding announcements and discretionary awards under senior-appointee review and a test of the President’s priorities. Under a rule settled on 2026-09-29, it counts only where an ask’s object is review, clearance or priority-alignment of an agency’s awards. This Quote’s object is one program’s policy (Housing First in Continuum of Care), so the order is at most background, and HUD’s CoC NOFOs already carry the record. City of Fresno v. Turner (N.D. Cal. 3:25-cv-07070, TRO 2025-08-27) restrains executive-order grant conditions at HUD and other agencies only as to its plaintiffs, so it adds no blocked event. The item is blocked on the District of Rhode Island’s set-aside of the 2026 NOFO in any case. Status unchanged.

Action
eliminate
Object
Housing First directives for Continuum of Care grantees and contract homelessness providers
ID
1444