CEO Corner: Week of February 10, 2026

The landscape of homelessness policy and practices continues to shift in 2026. Here’s a brief update of what’s been happening, including notable movements on the Continuum of Care Program for collaborative applicants.

Alliance Notes Deep Concerns with New HHS STREETS Pilot

Last week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a new $100 million initiative, Safety Through Recovery, Engagement, and Evidence-based Treatment and Supports (STREETS). The stated goal of this plan is to “solve long-standing homelessness issues, fight opioid addiction, and improve public safety by expanding treatment that emphasizes recovery and self-sufficiency.” This initiative builds on the harmful Executive Order on homelessness from July 2025.

The need for expanded treatment and service options for people with a substance use disorder —both housed and unhoused—is great. However, while the STREETS initiative emphasizes outreach, psychiatric care, medical stabilization, crisis intervention, and pathways to recovery housing, it explicitly rejects harm reduction practices and Housing First philosophies. As currently presented, this initiative will force an abstinence-only approach to treatment under a constant threat of forced institutionalization: the STREETS initiative is intended to be paired with Assisted Outpatient Treatment, a court-ordered outpatient program for individuals who are unwilling to engage in treatment on their own.

But STREETS will not solve the very real national shortages in services and treatment options for people with a mental illness and/or substance use disorder, nor will it solve the affordable housing crisis. The federal government’s movement away from harm reduction approaches is especially troubling; harm reduction approaches keep people alive in the absence of a wider array of accessible and available treatment options who want them. Details about the STREETS initiative continue to be unclear. Although it seems unlikely given the language used by the administration thus far, the Alliance hopes that there will be opportunities to use this funding to expand recovery-oriented programs that are grounded in individual choice.   

Appropriations Updates and the Continuum of Care (CoC) NOFO Lawsuit

Last week Congress passed its annual appropriations bill, which included funding for key homelessness and housing programs. Advocates like you played a big role in educating and applying pressure to Congressional offices about the CoC program; the bill may have had a very different outcome had advocates not kept pushing for a positive outcome. I want to thank each of you for the advocacy you’ve engaged in on this issue. It takes all of us to move the needle.

The demonstration of collective power by each of you worked in a big way: it resulted in trigger dates for the non-competitive renewal of expiring FY25 CoC-funded projects, along with some additional safeguards for FY26 CoC funding thanks to broad bipartisan support.

While this is worth celebrating, the fight is far from over. So what does the appropriations language mean for the CoC Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) process?

Our legal case remains ongoing. The Alliance remains committed to ensuring that CoCs with expired grants (or grants that will expire soon) can access lifesaving funding to keep people in their homes, pay staff, pay rent to landlords on time, and keep programs’ doors open.

The Alliance and our legal team will be keeping close track of how the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) moves forward as the case makes its way through the Court. Last Thursday, our legal team informed the Court about the new language included in the appropriations law passed last week, and shared their intent to meet with HUD’s attorneys about how this development affects both the scope and the timing of the lawsuit.

Update on Continuum of Care Grant Agreements

Many of you have expressed concern about Executive Orders, grant agreements from HUD, and how various lawsuits do or don’t impact you. Right now, some of the terms and conditions of those grant agreements are not enforceable.

• A federal court has temporarily blocked HUD from enforcing the “gender ideology” and “anti-discrimination” terms of the CoC agreement against any CoC grantee (Rhode Island Coalition Against Domestic Violence v. Kennedy). In the next phase of the litigation, the court is likely to determine whether to permanently prevent enforcement of these two terms.
  • HUD also acknowledged to the Court that they cannot implement or enforce certain provisions of the December 19 NOFO.
• A different federal court has temporarily blocked HUD and other federal agencies from enforcing the “gender ideology,” anti-discrimination, and immigration terms (King County v. Turner). However, this order applies only to plaintiffs in the case and not to all CoC grantees.

The Alliance will provide additional updates as each of these cases continue to make their way through the Courts.