ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — A U.S. District Court judge in Rhode Island blocked Housing and Urban Development’s plan to overhaul funding allocations Friday.
HUD seeks to restructure funding, diverting monies from permanent housing to temporary housing and services.
Homeless Services Network of Central Florida officials said the organization would lose at least 20% of local permanent housing units under the HUD proposal.
When announcing this year’s notice of funding opportunity , HUD Sec. Scott Turner said, “The ‘housing first’ experiment failed Americans by warehousing the vulnerable without results. This ideology promised to end homelessness. Instead, billions of taxpayer dollars were spent while homelessness increased to record levels. Housing alone will not solve a crisis driven by addiction and mental illness. Under President Trump’s leadership, HUD is making necessary reforms to put recovery first.”
Jason Sabbath has lived in permanent housing for 2-1/2 years. He worked at theme parks until an infection led to the amputation of his right leg. He eventually had the other leg amputated as well. After experiencing homelessness, the Homeless Services Network helped place him in his current apartment.
“Permanent housing can be a springboard, a starting-off point to getting back to work, to moving on with your life,” he said.
HUD’s plan raised alarms for groups like the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida . Now that a judge has blocked any action, Chief Executive Officer Martha Are said the organization must wait and see.
“There’s kind of a menu of directions this could go,” she said.
“Either HUD has to put out a new application that aligns with the judge’s orders in time for us to fill it out and them to score it and make decisions by Dec. 1, or Congress is going to have to intervene and direct HUD to renew contracts again,” Are said.
In response to the judge’s order, a HUD spokesperson said that the department stands by the lawfulness of its 2026 Continuum of Care (CoC) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO).
“Americans deserve and support commonsense homelessness solutions that restore recovery, self-sufficiency, and accountability for outcomes as set forth in the 2026 CoC NOFO,” the spokesperson said. “HUD will avail itself of all options under the law to end the status quo of drug paraphernalia, encampments and corruption on the taxpayer’s dime. HUD remains committed to funding results, not an extreme political agenda that puts ideology above outcomes.”
A HUD overhaul was also blocked in 2025.