CEO Corner Week of 9/1/26: Five Leadership Lessons from This Year’s Legal Battles  

As we barrel towards the end of summer 2026, I have been reflecting about how our work and priorities at the Alliance have shifted over the past year. 

We have learned a lot, especially about the power of advocacy and the use of the judicial system to protect the people we serve. But we also heard our community loud and clear that a positive vision for the future is imperative. How do we hold both the essential defensive work we must do AND look to a better future? 

This is an important question, so I plan to dedicate the next couple of CEO Corners to unpacking it. 

Today, I want to talk about what we have learned about the defensive work we have successfully conducted over the past year. Because, yes, it has been nearly a year since we were left with no choice but to pursue litigation against this Administration. Since September, we (and our amazing coalition of co-plaintiffs) have won relief in each of our three cases (CoC Builds, the 2025 CoC NOFO and the 2026 CoC NOFO), fought back the Administration’s appeal on the 2025 NOFO, and are in the process of litigating the Administration’s most recent appeal to the First Circuit on the 2026 CoC NOFO.    

But there has been a cost, hasn’t there? The benefits certainly outweigh them, but there are costs, nonetheless. The stress and anxiety about what will happen, the feeling of spinning your wheels on a process that may become moot, the heartache of making really hard decisions that you hope don’t have to be implemented. The uncertainty for staff and program participants about the funds that contribute to their ability to live their lives.   

So, I was not surprised that when we won the 2026 CoC NOFO case on August 7, the feedback was a slightly mixed bag of relief and frustration – relief that the NOFO was stopped, and frustration over the timing of the decision, which was after applications had already been crafted. 

The court’s most recent ruling seemed like a natural place to pause and take stock, because decisions are likely to get more challenging. Here are the most important lessons we’ve learned: 

• Stay in close touch with the field. This is our most important takeaway: the closer we are to what is happening on the ground, the better our decisions. The more we have listened to your frank and direct feedback – from surveys, meetings, and during our conferences – the more informed our decision making has been, especially regarding the decision to litigate.  
• We Must Consider Long Term Impacts. We can’t just consider what is in front of us in this moment; we must also consider what can happen over the course of the several years. In this year’s NOFO, for example, if we didn’t challenge this unlawful set aside, HUD would then be free to take this approach in both FY27 and FY28. The cumulative effect over the course of this period would be the almost complete gutting of permanent housing for hundreds of thousands of people nationwide.   
• Always Center the Human Impacts of Political Decisions. HUD gave itself incredibly broad authority this year to defund ANY project for political or ideological reasons, regardless of the performance of the project or what the community needs. And people with disabilities, trans and gender expansive people, immigrants, and people who are Native Hawaiian, American Indian, Alaska Native, Black, or Latino are among the most severely impacted by HUD’s intended changes. That just isn’t acceptable. 
• Connect the Dots. We also know that HUD was (and likely still is) planning to circumvent the competitive process all together in some communities to fund what are being described as “camps” or “campuses” to involuntarily detain people experiencing homelessness. The harm this would cause in these communities – and the precedent that would be set for the nation – was also top of mind for us as we made our determination regarding litigation.   
• Lawmakers Need to Know. The Alliance can and will use our contacts on Capitol Hill to inform lawmakers about the negative impact of HUD’s actions. But our voice does not matter nearly as much as the voices of local constituents. YOUR voices made the difference with members of Congress last year, compelling both Democrats and Republicans to require HUD to award FY2025 renewals. It is exhausting to keep up the level of advocacy that we are asking for, but it is the most effective way of reaching our shared goals.   

So, we learned a lot about playing defense this year. But what about the path forward? What about a vision for the future that is not shackled to a status quo that satisfies none of us? 

Please stay tuned for the next installment of this series to hear more about that!