BOOYAH! APPEALS COURT SAYS “TALK TO THE APPELLATE HAND” IN TRUMP’S EFFORT TO STAY ORDER TO PRESERVE FUNDS FOR HOMELESS PROGRAMS
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is responsible for maintaining the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, which is the primary federal program helping to deal with homelessness, including providing housing for hundreds of thousands of people who were formerly homeless (also known now as ‘unhoused’) or who are faced with becoming unhoused; the CoC program also provides financial support to communities to help “guard against dramatic funding fluctuations for each community from year to year.”
Put simply, it’s a lifeline for programs for the homeless, and for the homeless themselves. Communities apply for funding through local “Continuums”, which coordinate the local communities’ application for the CoC funding (the process of applying for this funding is known as a “competition”, because the communities are competing for a finite number of grants and amount of funds. Says the CoC site “CoC funds are awarded through a competitive process announced in annual Notices of Funding Opportunity (NOFOs). The CoC NOFOs set priorities that, in part, determine which grantees receive funding.”
In 2024 Congress set the funding opportunities to be 2-year opportunities, so the NOFO funds that were awarded were to cover 2024 and 2025. The 2024 funds were dispersed in January of 2025, and the 2025 funds were to be dispersed in January of 2026.
So of course Trump’s administration *rescinded* that, sending a notice in *November*, mere weeks before the 2025 funds were due to be dispersed, saying that they were rescinding the two-year approval and that everyone would have to apply to a new NOFO competition for 2025 funding!
The administration’s new MOFO (I know what I typed) announcement gave no explanation. The plaintiffs (several cities and some organizations) explained that “In one sentence … HUD rescinded the FY24-25 NOFO, with no explanation”.
(The Complaint is included for Notes from the Front members.)
Well, Judge Mary McElroy of the District Court of Rhode Island was having none of that, and issued a preliminary injunction, ordering HUD to immediately cease any forward motion on the new 2025 competition. She also ordered that all of the allotted funds be preserved (but not dispersed), while the case worked its way through the courts.
The defendants didn’t like that one little bit, and filed a motion to dissolve the injunction, which I’m including for Notes from the Front members because motions to dissolve, which is legalese for a motion to make something go “poof”, are much less common than are motions to stay.
The Court denied the motion to dissolve, citing to the decision in the case of New York v. U.S. Department of Justice which says “In life-or-death scenarios, times of crisis when someone faces domestic violence, homelessness, or a mental health crisis, it practically goes without saying that there can be no do over and no redress if services are unlawfully denied and someone suffers for it. That of course constitutes irreparable harm.”
So then the defendants filed a motion to stay the undissolved injunction, which the Court also denied.
Defendants (remember, the Trump administration, and specifically HUD) then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals. And in a beautiful 41-page spanking (included for Notes from the Front members), saying, among many other things, that “the record paints a disturbing picture of the harms that would flow to the plaintiffs, their constituents, and the public from issuing a stay,” the U.S. Court of Appeals smacked HUD down, denying their appeal. Meaning the injunction remains in effect.
Notes from the Front members: the Complaint, the District Court opinion, the Motion to Dissolve, and the Court of Appeals spanking, are in your inbox now!
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P.S. If you actually read all the way to the bottom please leave a comment that includes the word “MOFO”. It will show me that my efforts aren’t in vain and that people actually *do* read these things, and it will drive those who just skim crazy wondering why everyone is saying MOFO! ;~)
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