The First Circuit set an expedited schedule on HUD's emergency motion to stay the order vacating the FY2026 Continuum of Care NOFO: responses are due 5:00 p.m. August 21, HUD's reply August 24, and the court said it intends to rule promptly. Multnomah County will close the St. Johns drop-in center, a day center in North Portland for people experiencing homelessness, on August 31 as part of addressing the Homeless Services Department's $67 million budget shortfall; a replacement would open no sooner than July 2027. San Francisco announced a citywide Good Neighbor Policy requiring city-contracted shelter and service sites to conduct three perimeter checks a day, with implementation planned for November and December. In Berkeley, U.S. District Judge Edward Chen declined to postpone the closure of the Eighth and Harrison encampment and set an August 27 deadline for advocates to propose, and the city to approve or reject, relocation sites for 23 residents.
Multnomah County's Homeless Services Department will close the St. Johns drop-in center, a day center in North Portland for people experiencing homelessness, on August 31, after the Board of County Commissioners voted to cut its funding as part of addressing a $67 million shortfall in the department. According to the program, the center has served more than 330 people since opening in July 2025, with over 75 daily visitors; the county said its FY 2026 budgeted operating cost was about $530,000.
HSD said it will work to identify possible new facilities; a replacement center would open no sooner than July 2027.
The Oregon Government Ethics Commission voted unanimously on August 14 to open an investigation into former Home Forward CEO Ivory Mathews' travel spending. Mathews resigned in June after Willamette Week reported she had spent more than $100,000 on agency-funded travel over the three preceding years.
The commission's investigator found "a substantial objective basis to believe that Mathews may have violated the use of office and conflict of interest provisions."
Vancouver began a deep cleaning of the encampment surrounding the Share House Men's Shelter — the city's largest homeless encampment — on Wednesday, requiring residents to relocate for several days; a city notice says they can return Friday. The city's HART team lead, Jamie Spinelli, said the temporary removal addresses accumulated waste and biohazards that weekly in-place cleanups cannot, and said there is no location the city can direct campers to in the interim.
The city closed the nearby Mill Plain Boulevard soundwall camp in March 2025.
Do Good Multnomah Workers United (AFSCME Local 1790) said a letter-writing campaign — 2,662 letters as of August 17 — preceded the nonprofit's reduction of the layoffs it announced in July from 14 to 8. The workers won union recognition in August 2024 and remain without a first contract; the bargaining unit has shrunk from about 250 workers to fewer than 200 during negotiations, following city and county budget cuts.
Northwest Labor Press reported in August that the July round was Do Good Multnomah's fourth staffing cut in a year.
A Portland jury on Tuesday rejected Kenneth Voyles' $10 million civil claim against business owner James Grant, who shot Voyles three times after Voyles burglarized his stone countertop business while homeless. The jury sided 10–2 with Grant, declining to find the shooting unjustified, after deliberating only a few hours.
The lawsuit, filed May 6, 2026 over a March 2023 shooting, sought $5 million in compensatory and $5 million in punitive damages.
The Vancouver City Council on Monday approved the 82-home Mt. Hood Vista subdivision in east Vancouver, along with an associated zone change, over neighbors' objections. Planning documents show lots ranging from 2,500 to 4,000 square feet, with most at the lower end of that range.
Neighbors objected in May 2026 to the developer's plan to remove trees from the site.
U.S. District Judge Edward Chen rejected homeless advocates' request for a long-term postponement of Berkeley's closure of the Eighth and Harrison streets encampment, writing that he "expects the Harrison encampment will, in short order, be abated." His order requires advocates to generate, and the city to approve or reject, a list of proposed new campsites for 23 residents by August 27, and requires the city to continue the disability-accommodation assessments and property storage he ordered in April. City attorneys said the camp now has about 80 residents; advocates estimated around 35 in June 2025 and 40 in February.
Berkeley posted notices July 27 ordering the area cleared by August 3, before Chen ordered the city to hold off pending the hearing.
SF.gov (Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing) · 2026-08-19 · on the citywide Good Neighbor Policy for city-funded shelter and service sites
San Francisco announced a revised citywide Good Neighbor Policy setting a single standard for how city-contracted shelter, transitional housing, supportive housing, and service sites steward the surrounding public space: three perimeter checks a day, acknowledgment of community concerns within 24 hours, and reasonable efforts to resolve routine concerns within 72 hours. The policy sets a four-tier corrective-action ladder running from notice-and-correction to contract remedies including payment holds and termination, with app testing beginning in August, provider training in September and October, and implementation planned for November and December 2026.
The policy covers all HSH-funded shelter, transitional housing, access-point, drop-in, and supportive-housing property-management contracts and all DPH client-serving program contracts.
Washington Policy Center researcher Eric Zimmerman said the widely cited statistic that Seattle's Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program produced a 58% reduction in arrests misstates the original University of Washington evaluation, and called for an audit. LEAD founder Lisa Daugaard said the finding of "58% reduced odds of arrest compared to a robust control group" reflects a meaningful reduction in recidivism, and the University of Washington said it had used "likelihood" in place of "odds," said those instances have been corrected where found, and said it advised the LEAD team to correct its reporting.
LEAD launched in Seattle in 2011 and has been replicated in jurisdictions across the country.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson signed Executive Order 2026-4, directing an interdepartmental team across utilities and housing agencies to streamline permitting and creating a Housing Production Task Force to recommend policies on production and displacement. City data showed permit reviews averaging 374 days for large multifamily projects against a 180-day target, and 117 days for middle housing against a 60-day goal. The mayor's office said the task force will deliver a status update with policy recommendations no later than February 2027.
The Seattle Department of Construction & Inspections set the 180-day and 60-day review targets in October 2025 as part of a goal of halving construction permit review times.
Homeless Action Network of Detroit · 2026-08-11 · on Detroit CoC's suspension of FY2026 grant work after the NOFO vacatur
The Homeless Action Network of Detroit, the city's Continuum of Care collaborative applicant, suspended all work on its FY2026 HUD application after the August 7 federal ruling vacating the FY2026 NOFO, and told project applicants to stop entering projects into eSNAPS. The CoC Board had voted August 10 on new CoC Bonus and DV Bonus projects and its Project Priority Ranking list, which HAND is now publishing "for information only."
HUD announced on May 21, 2026 that all current CoC projects, including Detroit's, were awarded FY2025 funds non-competitively.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers cleared a state-owned lot in Norman on Friday under Gov. Kevin Stitt's Operation SAFE, giving residents 20 minutes to gather belongings before bulldozers removed tents; volunteers estimated 40 to 60 people were displaced. It was the second Operation SAFE sweep of the same site, which people had returned to after a May clearance. Letters from state COO David Ostrowe put state spending on clearing encampments from state property at $375,701 in Oklahoma City and $523,873 in Tulsa; Norman's clearing cost was not included.
Norman voters approved an $8 million shelter bond in April; construction is on hold while the Oklahoma Supreme Court considers an appeal challenging the bond's approval.
U.S. Court of Appeals, First Circuit via CourtListener · 2026-08-17 · on First Circuit expedited briefing on HUD's emergency stay motion in the CoC NOFO case
HUD filed an emergency motion for stay pending appeal directly in the First Circuit on August 14, one day after the district court denied its emergency stay of the August 7 order vacating the FY2026 Continuum of Care NOFO. On August 17 the First Circuit ordered plaintiffs-appellees to respond by 5:00 p.m. August 21 and HUD to reply by 5:00 p.m. August 24, and said it intends to rule promptly.
HUD's CoC competition page states the 2026 NOFO and its August 26 application deadline are no longer in force and that HUD is unable to accept applications.
The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority said it plans to modernize its financial operations after a KPMG fiscal review found that delayed payments to contracted service providers stemmed from interconnected operational issues — complicated workflows, manual processes, multiple funding sources, and underused data systems — rather than any single cause. The agency said it has implemented many of the recommendations and is seeking an accounting firm to guide longer-term changes; HUD Secretary Scott Turner posted on X on August 14 that "LAHSA is on notice — not another dime until they show the money actually helps people toward recovery and self-sufficiency."
On August 13, Judge David O. Carter ordered HUD to restore homelessness-program funding for Los Angeles County, ruling the June suspension violated the Administrative Procedure Act.
Open The Books, an organization that tracks government spending, released a report Monday analyzing state median household incomes, the federal House Price Index, and HUD spending on 18 housing programs from 2015 to 2024. It found median home prices outpaced median household wages in all 50 states over the decade, and calculated that more than $460 billion in HUD spending reduced what the group calls the "affordability gap" by 2.75%, a change the report characterizes as statistically insignificant. Idaho had the highest affordability-gap score at 83.3; Louisiana the lowest at 6.6.
The report, "Extreme Makeover: American Dream Edition?," is published at openthebooks.com.
2026-08-21 — Plaintiffs-appellees' response to HUD's emergency stay motion due 5:00 p.m., First Circuit No. 26-1923 (NAEH v. HUD) (source)
2026-08-24 — HUD reply in support of its emergency stay motion due 5:00 p.m., First Circuit No. 26-1923; the court says it intends to rule promptly (source)
2026-08-31 — House members return; vote expected on the Senate-amended CR funding the government through December 11 (source)
2026-09-08 — Comments due on HUD's proposed rescission of the 2024 floodplain and Federal Flood Risk Management Standard rules (source)
2026-09-14 — Comments due on HUD's CDBG-DR allocation formula notice (Docket No. FR-6337-N-02) (source)
2026-10-09 — Comments due on HUD's proposed amendments to the Fair Housing Act disparate-impact standard (source)
2026-12-11 — Federal funding expires under the Senate-passed CR, if enacted by the House (source)