[ACT NOW] Tell Congress to Stop HUD Changes to Affordable Housing Funding Rules

We urge you to contact your representatives TODAY and urge them to tell the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to reverse their decision to severely disrupt essential funding for affordable housing programs around the country. 

Send your message by visiting the National Alliance to End Homelessness here. Supplied below is text you can use.

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The very backbone of the nation's homeless response is under attack. Your district will absolutely see more people on the streets if you don't act NOW. Last week, HUD finally issued the FY2025 CoC Program NOFO more than four months later than usual—and it confirms all our worst fears. The timing will create extreme service disruption and financial constraints, and the FY2025 NOFO includes sweeping and abrupt changes which will influence our overall CoC funding with virtually no time to plan or prepare.

HUD acknowledges the earliest award date to be May 1. Currently funded grants will begin expiring as early as January, with 1/3 or more expiring in the first half of the year. These delays will destabilize programs, result in a loss in rental payments to landlords, and place constraints on other partners within the CoC. Contrary to HUD’s claims, the CoC Program competition is one of the most competitive grant programs in the federal government. 

HUD and Congress have historically placed a high value on local decision-making: HUD has relied on CoCs to have an annual robust, transparent, and comprehensive process. In the past, HUD—including during President Trump’s first term— honored the results of the local competition by making only 10 percent or less of a CoCs funding subject to the national competition. In FY2025, however, HUD is deprioritizing the results of this local process by making 70 percent of the funding subject to the national competition. Other sweeping changes which will have severe ramifications for the majority of CoCs and recipients of funding across the country, in urban, suburban, and rural areas alike. These changes include:

• A 30 percent cap on permanent housing for any CoC which will result in the displacement of at least 170,000 formerly homeless people, now stably housed, including many older adults and people with disabilities who live on fixed incomes and will have no alternative options.
• The criteria that CoCs will receive or lose the highest number of points are those that are most radically changed from years prior. Therefore, CoCs and recipients of funding who have historically done well in the competition will be most disadvantaged, placing much of their existing funding at risk.
• Expectations and requirements tied to local and state government decisions, beyond the control of the CoC and recipients of CoC funding, and which do not take into account the fact that some CoCs cover a single jurisdiction, some cover an entire state, and others cover some portion of jurisdictions within a state. 

Regardless of political affiliation or policy goals, this NOFO will have disastrous consequences everywhere. Despite Congressional members from both sides of the aisle and raising these concerns to HUD, asking them to reconsider, HUD’s decision to proceed is irresponsible and reckless. I urge you to take action to intervene and find a path that will protect CoC Program funding from the inevitable timing delays and abrupt changes that HUD is attempting to make through this NOFO.