Last month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a funding change that will threaten state-level organizations’ ability to support unhoused communities, city officials and organizers told The Herald.
A Nov. 13 notice from HUD announced that overall grant funding for the Continuum of Care program — which provides funding for state-level organizations to support unhoused communities across the country — has increased from $3.6 billion in 2024 to $3.9 billion this year.
But the notice also outlined a new 30% cap on the renewal of permanent housing grants for people experiencing homelessness, among other changes.
Despite the increased funding, this 30% cap effectively redirects a significant amount of funding away from permanent housing initiatives to transitional housing and support services. While permanent housing initiatives aim to increase the amount of housing available for people to live in the long term — often by developing supportive housing infrastructure — transitional housing efforts work to temporarily shelter unhoused people in the short term.
The 30% cap could put many Rhode Islanders’ housing in jeopardy, as it “would slash Rhode Island’s eligible renewal permanent supportive housing funding to just $5 million,” City of Providence spokesperson Michaela Antunes wrote in an email to The Herald.
“This could jeopardize permanent housing for at least 681 households, impacting 1,020 people,” she added.
In a HUD press release, HUD Secretary Scott Turner said the department is “stopping the Biden-era slush fund that fueled the homelessness crisis.”
“These long-overdue reforms will promote independence and ensure we are supporting means-tested approaches to … connect Americans with the help they need,” he added.
In response to HUD’s announcement, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha P’19 P’22 co-led a coalition of 18 other attorneys general and two governors in filing a lawsuit against HUD on Nov. 25.
“If allowed, these cuts and conditions would further exacerbate already dire conditions for homeless Rhode Islanders.,” Neronha said in a press release.
“Continuum of Care resources have been critical to Rhode Island’s ability to respond to homelessness, particularly in sustaining and expanding permanent supportive housing across the state,” wrote Emily Marshall, a spokesperson for the Rhode Island Executive Office of Housing, in an email to The Herald.
Rhode Island’s CoC efforts receive $17.3 million from the federal government via 37 annual grants to 18 unique providers, according to Antunes.
Of that funding, roughly $14.5 million goes to permanent housing, Antunes added. The funding supports over 970 households and impacts about 1,450 people, many living in Providence.
In October, a Rhode Island Coalition to End Homelessness report found that 1,022 Rhode Islanders this year were experiencing chronic homelessness, defined as being homeless for at least 12 months. During the organization’s Point-in-Time Count on a single night in January, they determined that 2,373 individuals were actively experiencing homelessness in the state.
The situation is especially dire considering that “Rhode Island’s shelter system is already near full capacity each night, with constituents sometimes needing to wait a month or more to be able to access a bed,” and even longer for permanent supportive housing, Antunes wrote.
Permanent supportive housing helps Rhode Islanders experiencing homelessness “achieve long-term stability,” so changes “of this magnitude would have serious consequences for communities statewide,” Marshall wrote.
Michelle Wilcox — the president and CEO of Crossroads Rhode Island, an organization that works to alleviate homelessness in the state through permanent housing developments — expressed similar sentiments.
“By reducing access to housing, the only proven solution for ending homelessness, the new HUD rules will have serious consequences,” Wilcox wrote to The Herald. She explained that the changes could result in “increasing homelessness and overwhelming (of) shelters, hospitals and other critical community services.”
Wilcox added that the implications of the new HUD rules can create new “risk” for communities across all 50 states.
Across the country, more than 170,000 formerly homeless Americans are at risk of losing their homes, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday against Turner and HUD by a coalition of municipalities and non-profits, including Crossroads Rhode Island.
“In a national housing crisis, forcing older adults, domestic violence victims, chronically homeless Americans with disabilities, veterans and families back onto the street or into mandated work or treatment programs is illogical and cruel,” Antunes wrote.
Still, Antunes highlighted how existing local initiatives may help continue addressing homelessness, even with decreased allocations of HUD funding to permanent housing.
Providence, for example, has “invested over $55 million in affordable housing construction and preservation projects through the Providence Housing Trust Fund,” which is “creating 1,600 new or preserved affordable units in our community,” Antunes added.
HUD did not respond to a request for comment.
Pavani Durbhakula is a senior staff writer and photographer. She is a first-year from DC and plans to study IAPA and Public Health. In her free time, she enjoys baking, reading, and searching for new coffee shops.
