SEATTLE, WA – Washington Attorney General Nick Brown says the Trump administration’s attempt to reprioritize billions of dollars in housing aid for people with disabilities is a policy that “comes straight out of a Charles Dickens story.”
Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner says reforms are needed to fix what he describes as a “Biden-era slush fund.”
These clashing perspectives will soon be tested in federal court.
Washington and other states on Tuesday sued the Trump administration, challenging changes it made this month to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care program.
The administration wants to shift funding away from permanent supportive housing to transitional housing assistance with work or service requirements.
Permanent supportive housing assists people with disabilities in getting stable housing and resources, while transitional housing is temporary help before people move into something more permanent.
Before the change, about 90% of Continuum of Care funding went to permanent housing. Now, it would make up 30% of the nearly $4 billion program.
The federal change risks sending 170,000 people across the country into homelessness, according to Politico, citing internal agency documents. Washington stands to lose tens of millions of dollars from the federal government.
The decision is also a blow to so-called housing first policies, which focus on getting vulnerable people into permanent housing before addressing their other needs, like mental health or substance use treatment and finding a job.
Washington, along with 19 other states and Washington, D.C., filed suit over the move in federal court in Rhode Island on Tuesday. The states are seeking a preliminary injunction to block it temporarily while litigation proceeds. They argue the Trump administration needed to get congressional authorization and that rulemaking was required to make such a policy change.
“These funds help people in Washington going through some of the most difficult situations that you can possibly imagine,” Brown, a Democrat, said in a press conference Tuesday. “But the changes that HUD is attempting to make will throw so many people into crisis.”
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson, also a Democrat, said in a statement it was “yet another cruel attack by the Trump administration on our most vulnerable Washingtonians.”
Turner, the Housing and Urban Development secretary, said in a statement earlier this month that the changes would “promote independence and ensure we are supporting means-tested approaches to carry out the President’s mandate, connect Americans with the help they need, and make our cities and towns beautiful and safe.”
About $120 million per year in these federal grants comes to Washington to provide permanent supportive housing. Most of the money goes to the state’s most populous counties: King, Pierce, Snohomish, Spokane and Clark. The remaining $25 million is spread across more rural counties.
Seattle and King County, for example, receive $67 million per year to house about 4,500 residents. City and county officials are making contingency plans.
But “there is no possible way that the state of Washington or all of these organizations could fill the holes that are going to be created,” Brown said.
When news of the Trump administration’s plans leaked in late September, housing leaders in the state Legislature said the move would loom over next year’s short legislative session.
Turner’s agency also added requirements for accessing the competitive funding, including not awarding applicants that “use a definition of sex as other than binary in humans.” And locales will be dinged if they don’t enforce the Trump administration’s favored homelessness policies, like bans on public camping.
Applications for the funding are due Jan. 14, with awards likely in the spring. The grants could arrive long after organizations have already seen their previous funding expire.
Some congressional Republicans have also expressed concern.
In a letter late last month, nearly two dozen GOP lawmakers told Turner that major changes “should be implemented carefully to avoid destabilizing programs that serve individuals with severe disabilities related to mental illness, chronic health conditions, or substance use disorders, as well as seniors with disabilities.”
The money goes to state, local and tribal governments, as well as public housing authorities and nonprofits. Across the country, about 7,000 awards are expected to be issued.
Washington has now brought 45 lawsuits in the first 10 months of President Donald Trump’s second term.
In this case, Washington is joined by New York, Rhode Island, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, D.C., and Wisconsin.
This story first appeared on Washington State Standard.
