The legal battleground shifted to Rhode Island this week, where a coalition of states launched a challenge against the Trump administration’s attempt to redraw the map of federal homelessness funding. At stake: more than $3 billion that keeps roofs over heads and entire support networks alive for some of the country’s most vulnerable residents.
The complaint, brought by twenty states along with Washington, D.C., argues that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has taken a congressionally crafted program and twisted it into something unrecognizable. Their accusation is blunt — that HUD’s new conditions sidestep federal law, sideline long-standing priorities, and single out LGBTQ-focused organizations for exclusion.
The Continuum of Care program, born in 1987, has long served as the quiet backbone of housing support for veterans, families navigating crisis, and people living with disabilities. For decades it has operated under a simple creed: get people into safe, stable housing first, and build the rest from there — mental health support, job skills, childcare, transportation, the scaffolding that helps a life take shape again.
But the administration wants to steer the ship sharply off that course. The revised rulebook caps how much funding can go to permanent housing, pushes grantees toward transitional programs with work requirements, and bars funds from reaching groups that center transgender communities. It also prohibits spending on programs tied to diversity or equity efforts, elective abortion services, or anything seen as obstructing the administration’s immigration priorities.
State officials warn these changes don’t just shift policy — they threaten to pull the floor out from under tens of thousands. Their lawsuit paints a grim picture: without intervention, communities will be forced to tear down long-running support systems or forfeit critical funding, leaving people with nowhere to turn. They estimate more than 170,000 individuals could lose housing as a result.
The filing argues that the administration does not have the authority to graft its own political conditions onto a funding stream that Congress explicitly designed to be distributed based on need alone. In their view, the new rules turn an anti-homelessness program into an ideological filter.
The states backing the lawsuit span coasts and regions, unified by a common message: this program isn’t a political playground — it’s a lifeline. And they’re heading to court to keep it that way.
