Connecticut Attorney General William Tong recently announced that the state has joined 19 states and the District of Columbia in a lawsuit over new federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) policies. The multi-state coalition alleges that the changes spurred by the Trump administration unlawfully reduce homelessness support funding.
“We’re taking HUD to court because the Trump Administration is illegally… imposing unlawful barriers that block access to housing and punish providers,” Tong said on social media. “These drastic and cruel changes will throw people out of their homes and back onto the streets.”
The lawsuit seeks to block changes to the Continuum of Care grant program, a HUD initiative which provides funding to nonprofits and government agencies “to quickly rehouse individuals and families experiencing homelessness.” The new policies by the Trump administration, the complaint said, “[threaten] to cancel thousands of existing [Continuum of Care] projects… and essentially guarantee that tens of thousands of formerly homeless individuals and families will be evicted back into homelessness.”
The lawsuit alleges that HUD adopted the policies without public input or authorization from Congress, which is required by law. It also claims that the new polices place a “ban on funding for organizations that serve transgender or gender-diverse Americans.”
“[HUD is] putting a bunch of nonsensical, ridiculous conditions on this funding… They’re now saying that if you serve people who are transgender… [or] if they struggle with addiction, then they can’t be housed,” Tong said during a press conference last week. “We are just trying to make sure that people are safe and that they don’t die out in the cold.”
In February, HUD Secretary Scott Turner called for the end of the program’s “equal access rule,” which ensures access to housing projects for all individuals regardless of gender identity.
“It’s time to get rid of all the far-left gender ideology and get government out of the way of what the Lord established from the beginning when he created man in his own image — male and female,” Turner, a former professional football player, said during the announcement.
The incumbent program, nicknamed “housing first,” positions affected people in shelters, who can then increase their stability to move on to finding health care and steady work. According to HUD, the new funding structure prioritizes “transitional housing and supportive services” instead.
In a recent press statement, Turner called “housing first” a “failed ideology.”
“We are stopping the Biden-era slush fund that fueled the homelessness crisis, shut out faith-based providers…and incentivized never-ending government dependency,” said Turner in the statement. “These long-overdue reforms will promote independence and ensure we are supporting means-tested approaches to carry out the President’s mandate.”
HUD designed the new funding model to accommodate a homelessness-centric executive order penned by President Donald Trump in July, titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.”
In the order, he claimed that prior homelessness approaches “deprioritized accountability and failed to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency.”
“Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order,” Trump wrote in the executive order. “My Administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety.”
According to the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, the state has seen a steady increase in homelessness and a swelling need for shelters and related services in recent years – but the Trump administration’s suggested handling of the situation “misses the mark.”
“This executive order… advances outdated, ineffective strategies that treat homelessness as a nuisance; to be removed, rather than a solvable crisis,” said Amber Freeman, the director of training and community impact for the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness at a press conference earlier this year. “Homelessness in Connecticut is not caused by crime or illness, it’s driven by poverty, systemic inequity, and an extreme lack of affordable housing.”
In addition to the multi-state complaint, numerous organizations have also filed lawsuits and public campaigns against HUD’s policy changes, including the National Alliance to End Homelessness and Women’s Development Corporation amongst others.