MINNEAPOLIS, MN — U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) led 41 of her colleagues in calling on the Trump Administration to immediately halt plans to cut housing funding for people who were previously homeless. 3,600 Minnesotans could lose their housing and be forced back into homelessness under the Trump Administration’s proposed changes to the Continuum of Care program. Minnesota received approximately $48 million in funding last year. Most of those funds are used to provide affordable housing with intensive, supportive services to people experiencing homelessness.
The Senators requested that the Administration use existing authorities to renew grants and change course to prevent massive disruption to homelessness programs. A similar letter was led by House Republicans.
“There are a lot of things we can do to combat homelessness in Minnesota. Taking housing and services away from people who have escaped homelessness is not a solution and kicking people out on the streets before winter is just cruel,” says Senator Smith. “More than 3,600 of our neighbors could lose their housing and services if the Trump Administration’s plans go through. It will pull the rug out from underneath every one of these Minnesotans when they have found some stability to try to get sober, take care of themselves, find work and turn their lives around. The Administration needs to reverse course immediately.”
“In 2024, the federal government awarded funding that preserves housing and services for more than 3,661 Minnesotans. Losing those dollars would jeopardize proven solutions and put our neighbors at risk,” says Anne Mavity, Executive Director of Minnesota Housing Partnership.
“We use Continuum of Care funding for critical rental subsidy and supportive services for 103 Minnesotans moving from homelessness to stability. Without these funds, rents will become unaffordable, and formerly homeless individuals will be back on the street,” says Jessie Hendel, Executive Director of Minneapolis-based Alliance Housing, which manages over 370 quality affordable housing units for people with very low incomes.
“There is a better way forward… HUD’s current path risks causing a dangerous spike in street homelessness and creating chaos in urban, suburban, and rural communities alike by forcing nearly 200,000 chronically homeless Americans with disabilities and families back onto the streets. We implore you to make the better choice and expeditiously renew current CoC grants for fiscal year 2025 as authorized by Congress to protect communities and avoid displacing thousands of our nation’s most vulnerable individuals,” concluded Senators in their request.
The proposed cuts come after the Trump Administration already reneged on $5.2 million in CoC funds promised to a Minnesota nonprofit developer to build 78 new units of supportive housing across two projects.
Smith led the letter alongside Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee; Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee; Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Ranking Member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies; and 38 other Senators.
You can read the whole letter here or below.
Dear Secretary Turner:
We write to express our deep concerns regarding the instability the entire homeless support system could face if funding delays, uncertainty, and rushed policy changes continue. Reports indicate that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) intends to issue a new fiscal year 2025 Continuum of Care (CoC) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) and make substantial changes to how funds are awarded. HUD must immediately reconsider these harmful and potentially illegal changes that could result in nearly 200,000 older adults, chronically homeless Americans with disabilities, veterans, and families being forced back onto the streets. As Secretary, you have the authority to avoid this worst-case scenario by carrying out the previously planned and Congressionally authorized two-year NOFO[1], and we strongly urge you to do so expeditiously.
The Continuum of Care program is the largest source of Federal grant funds for providing a wide range of housing and services for individuals experiencing or at risk of homelessness that are responsive to local community needs. On September 29, 2025, Politico reported that the Department intends to make wholesale changes to the fiscal year 2025 CoC NOFO.[2] The most troubling of these changes is a new, arbitrary cap on the amount of funds that may be used for permanent housing. Currently, 87 percent of CoC funds support permanent housing, but the new NOFO reportedly limits the amount of funding for permanent housing to only 30 percent. This appears to be in contravention of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act[3], undermines local decision-making authority, and ignores decades of research that has proven that permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing are less costly and more likely to be successful in providing long-term stability than other strategies, particularly for chronically homeless people and families. Today, CoC funds serve over 750,000 Americans experiencing homelessness each year, and every community will feel the impact of this dramatic cut. The cut will be largest for major cities in absolute terms, but rural communities—who experienced a 12 percent increase in homelessness between 2023 and 2024[4] and are more reliant on Federal funding—are likely to feel the impacts most severely[5].
In your written testimony for the June 2025 Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on HUD’s fiscal year 2026 budget request, you stated that your budget aimed to “better serve the American people while maintaining necessary assistance for the elderly and disabled.”[6] However, seniors are the fastest-growing demographic among people experiencing homelessness. The share of the homeless population aged 60 years and older in 2020 was 2.6 times higher than it was in 1990.[7] By dramatically cutting funding for permanent housing, tens of thousands of older adults and people with disabilities who currently reside in CoC funded permanent supportive housing could soon lose their homes and lose access to the supportive services they need to take care of their physical and mental health needs.
Each new administration can make policy changes when they take office. While we may not always agree on those policy changes, we should never have to question whether agency officials will faithfully follow the law and work to minimize harm to our constituents and communities when implementing those new policies. Reports of HUD intentionally blocking staff from examining the legality of the fiscal year 2025 NOFO changes with its own attorneys are deeply troubling. We are also concerned by HUD’s lack of communication with grantees, especially as any new NOFO at this point in the year would not provide grantees with adequate time or opportunity to plan for sweeping changes before some projects begin to run out of CoC funds in January 2026. Over the past decade, HUD has always issued the annual CoC NOFO by mid-August and provided on average 82 days for CoCs to develop applications. Without a NOFO published as of November 12, 2025, thousands of CoC project grants that expire between January and June 2026 will be at risk of funding disruptions or shuttering operations.
Further, HUD has taken several steps since January 20, 2025 to spark chaos and disrupt grantee operations, including applying new and likely illegal conditions to previously awarded CoC grants[8], repeatedly recompeting the fiscal year 2023 CoC Builds funding[9], proposing to eliminate the CoC program altogether[10], repeating rhetoric used by the President to villainize homeless people, and gutting the HUD workforce that implements the CoC and other community development programs[11]. All these actions raise serious questions and concerns about whether HUD is intentionally violating the law to prevent Congressionally appropriated funds from reaching the people and communities they were intended to support.
For months, we have heard from countless front-line workers, faith-based and non-profit service providers, mayors, and governors who have been frantically attempting to navigate HUD’s actions and anxiously waiting for HUD to provide details around the fiscal year 2025 NOFO changes. For months, our staffs have sent HUD countless questions about its intents and actions around CoC funding that have remained unanswered, undermining Congress’s ability to carry out its legislative and oversight functions. Real people in every community across the country rely on these funds to address homelessness. The funding competition process for fiscal year 2025 has not begun, and with CoC project awards beginning to expire in less than two months, HUD is simply out of time.
There is a better way forward. Congress already authorized HUD to compete CoC funds on a two-year basis for fiscal years 2024 and 2025, and communities already went through a two-year planning process. The shift to a two-year funding cycle had strong bipartisan support and aimed to reduce the burden on communities and provide greater predictability of funding, and members on both sides of the aisle support this approach.[12] HUD should make the responsible choice to renew current CoC grants, proactively work with communities to promote other proven strategies “based on research and after notice and public comment”[13], and work to ensure any policy changes meet all legal requirements to avoid more funding delays.
HUD’s current path risks causing a dangerous spike in street homelessness and creating chaos in urban, suburban, and rural communities alike by forcing nearly 200,000 chronically homeless Americans with disabilities and families back onto the streets. We implore you to make the better choice and expeditiously renew current CoC grants for fiscal year 2025 as authorized by Congress to protect communities and avoid displacing thousands of our nation’s most vulnerable individuals.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.’
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