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Press Release:

Attor­ney Gen­er­al Tong Sues Over HUD Pol­i­cy That Would Put More Peo­ple Into Home­less­ness

Preceding Event:

The Depart­ment of Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment (HUD) is a cab­i­net lev­el agency with­in the exec­u­tive branch of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment whose pri­ma­ry pur­pose is to admin­is­ter fed­er­al hous­ing and urban devel­op­ment laws. The agency also pro­vides grant mon­ey to states to help with hous­ing and face the prob­lem of home­less­ness. One of the pro­grams pro­vid­ing this fund­ing is the Con­tin­u­um of Care Pro­gram. Accord­ing to the press release, “For decades, HUD has helped local and region­al coali­tions plan and coor­di­nate hous­ing and ser­vices for peo­ple expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness through Con­tin­u­um of Care grants, which were cre­at­ed by Con­gress.”

On Nov. 13, 2025, HUD post­ed a Notice Of Fund­ing Oppor­tu­ni­ty for fis­cal year 2025, despite a pre­vi­ous notice for fis­cal year 2025 hav­ing already been issued on July 31, 2024 that was intend­ed to cov­er both 2024 and 2025. The new notice put forth pol­i­cy changes as well as con­di­tions for award­ing con­tin­u­um grants. HUD Sec­re­tary Scott Turn­er also put out an offi­cial announce­ment on the HUD web­site that stat­ed that this notice “rep­re­sents the most sig­nif­i­cant pol­i­cy reforms and changes in the pro­gram’s his­to­ry.” The announce­ment states that this move is in accor­dance with Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Exec­u­tive Order 14321, titled “End­ing Crime and Dis­or­der on Amer­i­ca’s Streets.” The law­suit refers to this EO as “the Anti-Home­less Order.” Accord­ing to the announce­ment, “this NOFO restores account­abil­i­ty to home­less­ness pro­grams and pro­motes self-suf­fi­cien­cy among vul­ner­a­ble Amer­i­cans. It redi­rects the major­i­ty of fund­ing to tran­si­tion­al hous­ing and sup­port­ive ser­vices, end­ing the sta­tus quo that per­pet­u­at­ed home­less­ness through a self-sus­tain­ing slush fund.”

Among oth­er changes, the notice cut guar­an­teed fund­ing for con­tin­u­um grants from 90% to 30%, put gen­der ide­ol­o­gy con­di­tions in place, and announced an end to the Hous­ing First pol­i­cy that “has guid­ed fed­er­al grant mak­ing since at least 2009,” accord­ing to the law­suit.

General Overview:

Accord­ing to the press release, on Nov. 11, 2025, Con­necti­cut Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong announced he was join­ing a coali­tion of states in suing HUD “to stop the Trump Admin­is­tra­tion from ille­gal­ly upend­ing sup­ports for tens of thou­sands of Amer­i­cans expe­ri­enc­ing home­less­ness or hous­ing inse­cu­ri­ty.”

The release stat­ed that the changes to the con­tin­u­um pro­gram are unlaw­ful and stat­ed that not only is fund­ing cut as a result of the notice, but “new unlaw­ful con­di­tions” have been placed on access to the fund­ing. From the press release, “These require­ments include that providers only rec­og­nize two gen­ders, man­date res­i­dents accept ser­vices as a pre­con­di­tion to obtain hous­ing, and pun­ish providers in local­i­ties that do not enforce strict anti-home­less laws, all bar­ri­ers that are in con­trast to HUD’s pre­vi­ous guid­ance and Con­gress’ approval,” the press release said.

“The com­plaint alleges HUD vio­lat­ed its own reg­u­la­tions by not engag­ing in rule­mak­ing before issu­ing the changes and vio­lat­ed the law by not receiv­ing con­gres­sion­al autho­riza­tion for these new con­di­tions, many of which are direct­ly con­trary to con­gres­sion­al­ly passed statutes and HUD’s own reg­u­la­tions. The plain­tiffs also argue that HUD’s actions are arbi­trary and capri­cious sev­er­al times over, as HUD has made no effort what­so­ev­er to explain the aban­don­ment of their own long­stand­ing poli­cies or con­sid­er the obvi­ous con­se­quences of tens of thou­sands of vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple being sud­den­ly evict­ed. The agency explic­it­ly encour­aged grantees to imple­ment Hous­ing First poli­cies and to focus on the par­tic­u­lar needs of LGBTQ+ indi­vid­u­als as recent­ly as last year.”

Connecticut Nexus:

Accord­ing to the law­suit and Con­necti­cut Depart­ment of Men­tal Health and Addic­tion Ser­vices Com­mis­sion­er Nan­cy Navaret­ta, the changes in HUD fund­ing would “endan­ger the hous­ing and ser­vices of the 2,300 indi­vid­u­als we serve at DMHAS.”

Date of filing:

Nov. 25, 2025

Case #:

1:25-cv-00626

Case title:

State of Wash­ing­ton et al v. Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment et al

Plaintiffs: 20 states and D.C.

• STATE OF WASHINGTON;
• STATE OF NEW YORK;
• STATE OF RHODE ISLAND;
• STATE OF ARIZONA;
• STATE OF CALIFORNIA;
• STATE OF COLORADO;
• STATE OF CONNECTICUT;
• STATE OF DELAWARE;
• DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA;
• STATE OF ILLINOIS;
• OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR ex rel. ANDY BESHEAR, in His Offi­cial Capac­i­ty as Gov­er­nor of the Com­mon­wealth of Ken­tucky;
• STATE OF MAINE;
• STATE OF MARYLAND;
• COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS;
• STATE OF MICHIGAN;
• STATE OF MINNESOTA;
• STATE OF NEW JERSEY;
• STATE OF OREGON;
• GOVERNOR JOSH SHAPIRO, in His Capac­i­ty as Gov­er­nor of the Com­mon­wealth of Penn­syl­va­nia;
• STATE OF VERMONT;
• STATE OF WISCONSIN

Defendants:

• UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT;
• ERIC SCOTT TURNER, in His Offi­cial Capac­i­ty as Sec­re­tary of the Unit­ed States Depart­ment of Hous­ing and Urban Devel­op­ment

Court:

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF RHODE ISLAND

Status as of Dec. 1, 2025:

OPEN
Last fil­ing: Nov. 26, 2025

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