In a ruling today, Judge McElroy of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island set aside HUD’s issuance of the 2026 NOFO in its entirety as violative of the Administrative Procedures Act.
The Court’s ruling is based on HUD’s failure to engage in the notice-and-comment process required by the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act. Because the Court found that it must vacate the issuance of the 2026 NOFO due to that, it declined to address the remainder of Plaintiffs’ challenges to either the 2026 NOFO itself or OMB’s alleged unlawful obstruction of funding.
The ruling is available here: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73568402/national-alliance-to-end-homelessness-v-united-states-department-of/ -second to last document on the list.
We do not yet know the full implications of this Court action for our local ranking process, project applications, or community application. We will wait to hear more about what the decision means for our local competition and for MCoC.
For today we are pausing our ranking process until we gain more clarity. We are likely to hear more from HUD and/or the National Alliance to End Homelessness soon. We will post more information on this site as it becomes available.
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Dean Klein, MSW
Executive Director
Maine CoC