AG. Brown Secures Order Protecting Federal Support for Homelessness Services

Attorney General Anthony G. Brown and a multistate coalition have won their case challenging the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) unlawful attempt to cap funding for permanent housing projects that help families facing housing insecurity or experiencing homelessness. If the coalition had not successfully challenged HUD’s policy, as many as 2,000 Marylanders would have lost their homes.
“No Marylander should lose their home because the federal government tried to skip the process the law requires,” said Attorney General Brown. “Today’s ruling stops HUD’s latest attempt to do just that, protecting roughly 2,000 Marylanders who depend on this program from being forced on the streets.” For more than two decades, HUD has embraced a commitment to permanent housing programs and the Housing First model, which prioritizes rapid placement in permanent housing without requiring people to first meet conditions such as sobriety or a minimum income threshold. But the current federal administration has rejected that commitment and undermined the Continuum of Care (CoC) program.

In June, the states won a separate case against HUD in federal court in Rhode Island regarding the agency’s decision last year to impose unlawful conditions on billions of dollars in funding for the CoC program, including an attempt to impose a cap on the amount of CoC funds that can support permanent supportive housing.

After that cap was struck down as unlawful, HUD changed its tactics. They issued a notice of funding opportunity that would have created a $1.3 billion set-aside for new projects prioritizing such things as transitional housing, which would have resulted in a de facto cap on permanent housing. That shift threatened housing for at least 97,000 residents of CoC-funded permanent housing across the country, including roughly 2,000 Marylanders, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.