CEO Corner: Week of December 15

Although we are (finally) reaching the end of this very long and challenging year, it certainly doesn’t feel like the traditional holiday pause. Here’s a quick run-down to keep you up to speed with the latest.

Lawsuit Updates

We know that many of you are interested in updates on the current lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) related to the sudden unlawful changes to the Continuum of Care (CoC) Builds and CoC Program Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs). However, as I mentioned last week, we are very limited in what we can say during active litigation. Here are two quick updates:

1. FY2025 CoC NOFO: as many of you know,  a hearing was held last Monday. Unfortunately, the hearing was largely disrupted by HUD’s decision to rescind the FY25 CoC NOFO with the stated intention of reissuing it. The next hearing in this matter is scheduled for this Friday, December 19.
2. CoC Builds: This litigation continues to go through the legal process and you can stay abreast of updates by following along with the case here.    

FY24 Grant Agreements

For the last several weeks, we have heard from many of you that grant agreements for several HUD programs – including FY24 CoC grant agreements and Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG) grant agreements – with late-in-the-year start dates were not being executed by HUD. The reasons you reported for the delay ranged from field offices being behind from the government shutdown to HUD intentionally pausing grant processing due to other lawsuits.

This, combined with other uncertainty related to the FY2025 CoC Program NOFO, caused some grantees to even begin to plan to close their doors. However, as of Thursday (December 11), we understand that these grant agreements have begun moving again. If your grant agreements are still stuck, we encourage you to raise it with your field office and notify your Congressional delegation so they can speak to HUD directly.

Taking Some Breathing Room

Finally, I want to encourage everyone to take advantage of the holiday season to rest up and recover. I wish that I could tell you that next year will be easier, but I can’t for certain. We’ll all need to be ready to lock arms and keep fighting for the people we serve.

That means self-care especially matters this holiday season. Despite the pressures that we are all under, you deserve a chance to get some time off, be with loved ones, and have an extra cookie (or four) this year. We’re all going to need one another in 2026.