US Judge Blocks Trump Administration From Altering Homelessness Funding Conditions

Source: Reuters

December 19, 2025 12:46 PM EST Updated 25 mins ago


Dec 19 (Reuters) - A federal judge on Friday blocked President Donald Trump's administration from imposing new restrictions on more than $3 billion in grant funding used to provide permanent housing and other services to homeless people.

U.S. District Judge Mary McElroy in Providence, Rhode Island, at the close of a court hearing issued a preliminary injunction barring the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from rescinding an earlier policy governing how funding from the Continuum of Care grant program would be provided to grant recipients.

She did so at the behest of officials from 20 mostly Democratic-led states and Washington, D.C. and a coalition of local governments and nonprofit organizations who said HUD was seeking to adopt changes that would put an estimated 170,000 people at risk of losing their housing.

McElroy said HUD's efforts to change the grant funding conditions conflicted with the statutory mandates of the McKinney-Vento Act, including the prioritization by Congress of providing funding to provide for stable and permanent housing. The judge, appointed by Trump during his first term in office after Democratic President Barack Obama initially nominated her, said HUD's actions had guaranteed gaps in funding that would result in "concrete, imminent harms."

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us-judge-blocks-trump-administration-from-altering-homelessness-funding-2025-12-19/