Defending the Equal Access Rule: Strategies and Considerations for Public Comment

What is the Policy Context for Changes to the Equal Access Rule?

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently released a proposal to alter the Equal Access Rule (EAR), which would decimate the existing provisions that ensure equal access, regardless of gender identity, to HUD programs. The Rule enforces protections for gender-expansive communities, and this attack will impact all people experiencing homelessness and communities across the country. 

You can take a stand today by submitting a public comment to defend the EAR. Interested parties have until June 29 to submit public comments in opposition to this proposal. For more ways to take action, please visit this toolkit from Advocates for Trans Equality. 

How will HUD’s Proposal Impact Providers? 

HUD’s proposed changes have a broad range of operational, legal, and human impacts including: 

• Compounding disparities: Systemic discrimination, weak policy protections against discrimination, and social stigma drives disproportionate rates of homelessness for transgender and gender expansion populations, who will face additional barriers to receiving critical assistance. HUD’s proposal risks exacerbating these inequities and driving more housing instability and worse health outcomes. 
• Excluding people from services: Verifying each client’s sex before accessing services will likely require identification, if not an invasive process. However, many people living on the streets and shelters lack ID because of the money, supporting documents, or residential address needed to obtain an ID card. And as cities increasingly destroy encampments and displace people, people often lose crucial documents such as birth certificates. Every state also has its own ID processes, complicating implementation across the country. 
• Increasing administrative burdens for providers: Homeless services providers already operate on shoestring budgets, are stretched for capacity, and lack adequate staffing. Verifying gender, whether through an invasive process such as a genital check, or through mandating ID, adds another step of bureaucracy distracts them from the real work at hand: getting people off the streets. 
• Reducing trust in providers: Service denials and restrictions will jeopardize vital trust in case managers, shelters, and providers. This trust is necessary to connect people back to housing and will keep people on the streets for longer. Already vulnerable populations will be pushed further to the margins. 
• Increasing visible homelessness and straining local budgets: As people are rejected from shelters, communities will see more homelessness, costing more to local budgets, straining emergency services, and deteriorating unhoused people’s health and safety. 

The above impacts will fall most directly on transgender and gender expansive populations (people of color in particular), who already face widespread discrimination, leading to disparate rates of homelessness and increased, and often fatal, vulnerability. 

What Can Providers Highlight in Public Comments? 

General Tips 

• Submit unique and specific comments: Raise as many issues and as much supporting evidence as you can, including content that you think other organizations or people submitting comments won’t, as federal agencies must consider unique comments. 
• Clearly identify separate arguments: Separate each of your arguments with its own heading or subheading. This gives the agency more issues they must consider and address, increasing the ways they may fall short of their obligation to consider comments. 
• Leverage evidence, including lived experience: To the greatest extent, share data points and stories to ensure more substantive comments for agencies to review. 

Consider Addressing the Following Themes in Public Comments:

Importance of the EAR 

• How has the EAR expanded access to services in your community? What impact have these protections had on your ability to solve homelessness? 

• What are the risks of gutting the EAR? How will the impacts be felt at the program participant, provider, system, and community levels? 

• What might be the long-term consequences of this proposed policy? How will program participant trust in providers and the system be impacted? Will it become more difficult to serve people? 

Lack of HUD Due Diligence 

• What information and evidence did HUD fail to consider when drafting this proposed rule? 
• What barriers would your organization face attempting to comply with a finalized rule? How would compliance impact your ability to end people’s episodes of homelessness? 

What are Key Considerations for Providers Submitting Comments? 

Submitting public comments, both at an organizational and individual level, is protected under the First Amendment. Any individual or organization can submit a comment. Comments from organizations that are recipients of HUD funding for impacted programs, as well as individuals served by those programs, hold significant importance given how federal rulemaking directly impacts your program. The data and stories you can share should directly influence policymaking.  

Thousands of shelter operators and providers submitted comments in opposition to HUD’s attempt to repeal the EAR back in 2019. This campaign was one of the most successful, as well as the largest, comment campaigns in HUD history. 

In a challenging and uncertain environment, federal funding recipients can pursue additional strategies to ensure their voices can shape federal policy, including through: 

• Submitting anonymous comments, both as an individual and as an organization. 
• Joining sign on letters –for example, a state-level organization could sponsor a letter signed by “20 domestic violence service provides in the state.” 
• Sharing testimonials from clients and staff with advocacy and other partners to reference in their comments.