Boston Mayor Wu sues President Trump over $29M in federal homelessness funding cuts

Gayla Cawley, Boston Herald on Dec 1, 2025

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Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said the Trump administration’s efforts to place restrictions on a critical federal funding program for housing and homelessness services will cost the city $29 million and leave 1,100 people out on the streets this winter.

Wu announced Monday that the city has joined 11 jurisdictions and nonprofit organizations in suing the Trump administration with the aim to stop it from “creating unlawful and unreasonable restrictions on funding for proven solutions to homelessness,” according to a statement released by her office.

“Permanent supportive housing has been a key to tackling homelessness and keeping Bostonians stable and safe in our community,” Wu said in a statement. “The Trump administration’s harmful changes to this longstanding program could leave more than 1,100 Bostonians homeless. … I’m grateful to all the jurisdictions joining us in this lawsuit to challenge these detrimental new requirements.”

The lawsuit centers around changes the Trump administration is seeking to make to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care Program, which helps to provide the necessary resources for local governments and organizations to fund permanent housing projects to support veterans, older residents, people with disabilities, individuals and families facing homelessness.

Boston has received funding from the HUD-administered program since the 1990s, including $48 million this year, but now finds further cash at risk by funding requirements that were rescinded by HUD on Nov. 13 — and replaced with new criteria that “threaten existing services,” Wu’s office said.

The nearly $50 million in federal Continuum of Care grant funds received by the city this year benefited 19 nonprofits and helped to stabilize more than 2,000 formerly homeless households, the mayor’s office said.

Changes proposed by the federal government would require Boston to eliminate $29 million in permanent supportive housing projects and replace them with new services-only and temporary housing projects, city officials said.

The mayor’s office said such changes would be harmful in that they would promote strict mandatory service, forced treatment, and employment requirements “over proven anti-homelessness strategies.”

“Boston’s Continuum of Care funds the backbone of our work to house our homeless population,” Sheila Dillon, the city’s chief of housing, said in a statement. “The proposed federal changes in this year’s notice puts our residents at serious risk. Without these federal grants, people who rely on permanent supportive housing, designated to help those who live with disabling conditions, could lose the homes that have helped them rebuild their lives.”

A HUD press release from last month characterized the changes as “monumental reforms” that will end the “Biden-era slush fund” that directed 90% of Continuum of Care funds over the last four years to support what the Trump administration considers to a “failed ‘Housing First’ ideology.”

Such an approach, per HUD, “encourages dependence on endless government handouts while neglecting to address the root causes of homelessness” — including illicit drugs and mental illness.

HUD said the CoC program was intended to be a national competition to select the most effective and innovative programs, but the Biden administration only completed about 10% of projects over four years. During that same time period, transitional housing, which HUD said has been proven to encourage self-sufficiency, never received more than 2% of CoC funding, per the release.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner is now requiring that 70% of projects be completed to determine the best programs, “ending the status quo that automatically renewed funding without measuring success,” the housing agency’s statement said.

“Our philosophy for addressing the homelessness crisis will now define success not by dollars spent or housing units filled, but by how many people achieve long-term self-sufficiency and recovery,” Turner said in a statement. “We are stopping the Biden-era slush fund that fueled the homelessness crisis, shut out faith-based providers simply because of their values, and incentivized never-ending government dependency.

“These long-overdue reforms will promote independence,” Turner said, “and ensure we are supporting means-tested approaches to carry out the president’s mandate, connect Americans with the help they need, and make our cities and towns beautiful and safe.”

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