Oregon providers told KATU the federal shift away from Housing First in Continuum of Care funding could push 4,000 to 5,000 Oregonians back into homelessness, as Continuums submitted applications against the September 30 deadline and HUD extended it to October 14 for Los Angeles only. The National Urban League and New York’s attorney general sued over the $56 million housing counseling piece of the $810 million pocket rescission, after GAO concluded the funds cannot be withheld past the end of FY2026. NLIHC reported that the District of Rhode Island vacated HUD’s PRWORA immigration-verification notice on September 21. San Diego’s city-funded downtown day center closed September 30; on September 28 Irwin Jacobs gave Father Joe’s $50 million toward a $350 million campus on the site of its replacement. An OPB poll put the Oregon governor’s race at 47–46, with 52% of respondents naming cost of living, housing or taxes as the state’s top problem.
Mid-Willamette Valley Community Action executive director Jimmy Jones said the federal shift away from Housing First in Continuum of Care funding criteria could displace 4,000 to 5,000 Oregonians back into homelessness; KATU reported his agency is among those still applying for the funds. Multnomah County said in a statement that up to a few hundred people could lose federally supported housing under the shift toward transitional housing with service requirements, and that it had submitted an application with the goal of keeping everyone currently housed in place. The White House said the change holds grantees “to higher standards of effectiveness in reducing homelessness and increasing public safety.”
Oregon joined 20 other states in suing HUD over the CoC changes on November 25, 2025; at that time Jones estimated 2,500 to 3,000 Oregonians could lose housing.
Cascadia Health and Central City Concern told WW that property insurers have pulled back from covering their supportive housing after fires, floods and unit damage, leaving the nonprofits largely self-insuring. Cascadia said its property deductible rose from $10,000 to $100,000 in 2023 before falling to $25,000 as of August 2026; CCC said its per-incident deductible went from $10,000 in 2020 to $100,000 as of July 2026, with premiums also rising. Cascadia CEO James Schroeder told Councilor Steve Novick at a September 9 council work session that the city needs more “step-up” and “step-down” settings between hospital and permanent housing.
Health Share of Oregon estimates the high-acuity behavioral health group is about 9% of the local Medicaid population and accounts for 29% of Medicaid costs and 39% of inpatient admissions.
Willamette Week · 2026-09-30 · on the three Multnomah County chair candidates on Sunstone Way contract oversight
In WW endorsement interviews, chair candidates Shannon Singleton, Sharon Meieran and Julia Brim-Edwards each answered what oversight should have caught Sunstone Way, the homeless services nonprofit the county said in June had billed $3.6 million in unallowable expenses since 2024 and which has since shut down. Singleton said county fiscal monitoring is done “more as a spot check” and that underperforming contractors should lose funding; Meieran said focusing on individual contracts “will just continue to manage decline” and called for contracting that ties spending to results; Brim-Edwards said her budget note requires outcomes to be entered in the county’s contract management system, with a review of all county contracts possible in January. WW noted the county has spent some $150 million a year in Supportive Housing Services tax dollars since 2021.
The county’s letter alleging $3.6 million in unallowable Sunstone Way billing went out in June 2026; the November 3 chair election is the county’s first using ranked-choice voting.
Do Good Multnomah’s last day running Vancouver’s 40-bed Kiggins Village Safe Stay shelter was September 30, with Live Love Outreach, which already runs Hope Village and the city’s Safe Park, taking over October 1 under a June City Council decision. Vancouver homeless response manager Jamie Spinelli said Kiggins Village was more expensive to operate than the city’s other Safe Stay sites, that the switch was not driven by Do Good’s performance, and that the city expects to save about $500,000 a year. Do Good’s impact report said it served 114 people at the site from 2023 to 2026, including 51 veterans, with an average stay of 161 days before moving into housing.
The council voted in June to move Do Good Multnomah off Kiggins Village so it could focus on operating the 120-bed Bridge Shelter opening later this year.
A DHM Research poll of 915 likely voters commissioned by OPB and conducted September 17–27 put Republican Christine Drazan at 47% and Gov. Tina Kotek at 46% after leaners were pushed, with a 3.24% margin of error. Asked the state’s top problem, 52% of respondents named cost of living, housing affordability, high tax rates or the job market; pollster John Horvick said homelessness, crime and drug use had topped voter concerns four years earlier. Kotek drew 54% of tri-county Portland-area voters, down from roughly 61% in 2022.
Polls in late June and early September showed Drazan ahead by 4 and 2 points respectively.
Commissioners Nafisa Fai and Pam Treece, in a November 3 runoff for Washington County chair after Fai took 39.1% and Treece 33.1% in May, answered written questions on housing and homelessness. Fai said the county should increase supply, use its Moving to Work authority and prevent homelessness before people lose their homes, and that “no one should have to use the streets as a waiting room for housing.” Treece said she supports new shelters and transitional housing with good neighbor agreements and cited the Center for Addictions Triage and Treatment’s on-site housing and medical services.
Neither candidate reached 50% in the May primary, which triggered the November runoff.
The city-funded Neil Good Day Center in East Village closed Wednesday after the city declined to renew its funding in this year’s budget; the city had paid nearly $950,000 of the center’s $1.7 million annual operating cost. Operator Father Joe’s Villages moved the services two blocks to its Joan Kroc Center, opening Thursday at its own expense, with capacity for 160 people against the day center’s 200-plus a day and no belongings storage. The city said it funds about 2,600 sheltering options across nearly two dozen programs and is working with Caltrans, which owns the land, to return the property.
The Joan Kroc Center absorbing the services is slated for demolition, with residents relocated in early 2028, to make way for the Jacobs Family Campus announced September 28.
Qualcomm co-founder Irwin Jacobs announced a $50 million gift to Father Joe’s Villages, the largest in the organization’s history, toward a three-building, 18-story complex at Imperial Avenue and 15th Street expected to cost about $350 million and break ground in 2028. Developer Arete Development said the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Family Campus would have more than 500 affordable units, including 150 for older adults and 77 for transitional housing. The project has a little more than 14% of its funding secured; Mayor Todd Gloria said the city would consider a request for funds and Supervisor Paloma Aguirre said it was too early to say whether she would seek county money.
The project requires demolishing the Joan Kroc Center; KPBS reported its residents would be moved to Father Joe’s Fifth Avenue and Ash Street facility in early 2028, with a targeted completion in 2032.
Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing data showed that of 345 adults and families placed through the Large Vehicle Refuge Permit Program between November 2025 and September 2026, 115, one third, were housed outside San Francisco city limits. About 80 percent of placements used federally funded rapid-rehousing vouchers that taper off over two years, and the share of all such voucher holders housed outside the city rose from 22 percent in 2021 to 58 percent this year. About 500 vehicles housed people when Mayor Daniel Lurie announced the two-hour parking limit in July 2025; the department said placements are generally within about 50 miles.
The two-hour limit on vehicles over 7 feet tall or 22 feet long has been enforced since November 2025, with six-month temporary permits offered to RV residents who agreed to give up their vehicles.
The Sacramento City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to declare a 102-acre former highway patrol test track in Meadowview surplus property and solicit private development proposals, four years after buying it for more than $12 million with plans that included a homeless “safe ground,” a youth sports complex and a cemetery. Development project manager Ginger Weagraff told the council any development would need at least $50 million in roads, utilities and basic infrastructure the city cannot afford. Under state law the parcel must first be considered for affordable housing; the city also said it may use a small portion for a new animal shelter.
Any eventual project returns to the council for approval.
The Pittsburgh Zoning Board of Adjustment was set to hear testimony Wednesday on the Allegheny County Department of Human Services’ plan to convert a vacant commercial building at 3567 Bigelow Blvd. into a year-round low-barrier overflow shelter, replacing the seasonal Perry South site. Community Family Advocates would run 80 to 100 beds from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m., expandable to 150 in severe weather, with a Downtown Partnership shuttle to Second Avenue Commons for daytime services. Councilor Deb Gross said the interim-housing zoning use was intended for transitional housing and is being “misapplied” to an overnight shelter, and said the zoning administrator waived a required development activities meeting and management plan.
The interim-housing use the application relies on was added to the city zoning code by an ordinance passed in August 2025; the Perry South overflow shelter has operated for the past two winters.
Pittsburgh is closing the East Ohio Street drop-in center of its Reaching Out On The Streets program on Friday after declining to renew the lease, the program’s third office closure in the two years since the city took it over from Allegheny Health Network. The city said ROOTS staff will work through field outreach rather than a brick-and-mortar site; the landlord said he would offer a new lease “tomorrow,” and the Pittsburgh chapter of the National Union of the Homeless delivered a petition to Mayor Corey O’Connor’s office Wednesday. ROOTS was awarded nearly $800,000 by the county Department of Human Services in June to expand outreach, and program manager Benjamin Talik said the city is looking for a new North Side site.
The closure was first posted for the end of September and then pushed to Friday, October 2.
The Pierce County Council voted unanimously Tuesday to award about $11.4 million from the county’s 0.1% housing sales tax to five projects, including $4.9 million for the 113-unit Fairway at DuPont and $3.5 million for the Low Income Housing Institute’s 73-unit Lincoln Family Housing in Tacoma, which sets aside 18 units for homeless households. Eleven applications had sought $35.8 million; unfunded proposals included LIHI’s Aspen Court conversion of a former Comfort Inn into permanent supportive housing. The county said 1,545 affordable homes have been built or preserved since the tax took effect.
The 0.1% sales tax was passed in 2023; the county has projected it needs more than 100,000 new units by 2044, about 77,000 of them for low-income households.
The Community Voice · 2026-09-28 · on Kansas City’s Housing Gateway first-year targets and funding
Kansas City’s Housing Gateway, established by the City Council in February with $1 million, set a first-year goal of 600 housing placements, about 400 rapid resolutions for newly homeless people and 200 intensive interventions for long-term homeless people, and has $10.8 million committed toward a $26 million two-year goal, per the Kansas City Business Journal. The program plans to permanently close eight encampment areas in its first phase around greater downtown, the Country Club Plaza and 18th & Vine, and closed its first encampment this month, moving five people into housing. The city said unsheltered homelessness has risen about 168% since 2018 and estimates about 1,750 single adults enter homelessness regionwide each year.
The Royals’ downtown stadium community-benefits agreement, approved by the council in August, committed $5 million of the program’s funding.
Roll Call · 2026-09-30 · on the National Urban League suit over the $56M housing counseling rescission
The National Urban League and state and local housing nonprofits sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on the night of September 29 to block the $56 million HUD housing counseling cut included in the administration’s $810 million pocket rescission, arguing it violated the Impoundment Control Act and the Constitution. In decision B-338788, GAO’s general counsel concluded on September 29 that the September 25 special message, covering 11 appropriation accounts, does not permit withholding the funds past the end of FY2026 because the 45-day review period runs at least to November 9. New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a separate suit on September 30, and her office said more than 7,000 New York households were at risk of losing counseling services; Sen. Jeff Merkley’s unanimous-consent request to nullify the rescission was blocked by Budget Chairman Ron Johnson.
The pocket rescission was transmitted September 25; the GAO decision is B-338788 and the New York complaint was announced by the attorney general’s office on September 30.
National Low Income Housing Coalition · 2026-09-28
NLIHC reported that on September 21 the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island granted summary judgment to a coalition of attorneys general led by New York and vacated HUD’s November 26, 2025 notice designating CDBG, HOME, Continuum of Care and other programs as “federal public benefits” requiring immigration-status verification under PRWORA, along with parallel notices from DOJ, HHS, Labor and Education. The court held the agencies violated the Administrative Procedure Act by skipping notice-and-comment rulemaking and left open the possibility of future rulemaking. The court docket lists the case as New York et al. v. U.S. Department of Justice et al., No. 1:25-cv-00345 (D.R.I.), with 21 attorneys general as plaintiffs.
HUD’s PRWORA notice was published in the Federal Register on November 26, 2025; a February 18, 2026 DOJ Office of Legal Counsel opinion separately concluded PRWORA applies to all HUD housing programs.
Continuums of Care submitted FY2026 applications against the reinstated September 30 deadline, with NAHRO’s general counsel saying applicants did not know what they would receive under the new program rules. NAHRO said HUD’s proposed 30% cap on permanent supportive housing could affect as many as 97,000 households, and Community Solutions estimated up to $1.8 billion in annual rental payments at risk. NAHRO also said that of roughly 6,400 FY2024 renewal grants Congress required HUD to fund, only about 5,300 had been fully executed.
HUD’s competition page states it has extended the September 30 application deadline to October 14, 2026 for CA-600 (Los Angeles) applications only, and that comments on a Federal Register notice on proposed activities are due October 13.
AP reporters Laura Ungar and Geoff Mulvihill reported on providers nationwide adjusting to the administration’s redirection of federal homelessness funding from permanent supportive housing toward transitional housing of up to two years with required treatment. The story cited HUD’s estimate of nearly 750,000 people homeless last year, up 31% from 2019, and roughly 173,000 permanent supportive housing beds for chronically homeless people plus 235,000 for other populations. It noted the FY2027 budget proposal would eliminate the Continuum of Care program and that an appeals court this month allowed the policy changes to proceed.
In the prior CoC competition more than 60% of funds went to permanent supportive housing and 1% to transitional housing, per the AP’s account of HUD data.
FHFA Director Bill Pulte announced on X on September 28 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would move to a single loan-level price adjustment grid for mortgages scored with either Classic FICO or VantageScore 4.0, removing the 20-point downward adjustment that had applied to VantageScore under the early-September framework. Rocket Mortgage said the same day it would make VantageScore 4.0 its preferred model for eligible loans, reporting average savings of $1,600 at closing for borrowers who benefited. FICO’s stock fell more than 26% by 4 p.m. ET on September 29.
Classic FICO is still required for manually underwritten loans; FHA plans to begin underwriting with FICO 10T in January 2027.
USDA and HUD signed a memorandum of understanding required by Section 802 of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act to evaluate environmental-review categorical exclusions, designate a lead agency for jointly funded projects’ environmental documents, and study a joint physical inspection process. The release said USDA Rural Development invested more than $42 billion in FY2025 across housing, community facilities, water, broadband and business programs, and named HUD as lead for interagency coordination. Coordination leads are Rural Housing Service Administrator George Kelly for USDA and Chief of Staff Drew McCall and Deputy Chief of Staff Reid Wilson for HUD.
Section 802, the Streamlining Rural Housing Act, became law on July 11, 2026 as part of Public Law 119-101.
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs approved S. 5354, the Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Modernization Act of 2026, on September 23, sending the first NAHASDA reauthorization in more than a decade to the full Senate. The bill, led by Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Brian Schatz, would reauthorize NAHASDA through 2033, expand financing tools, streamline environmental reviews and strengthen support for Native veterans; Murkowski offered an amendment raising the $5,000 de minimis threshold to $22,500. The House companion, introduced in March, remains in committee.
The committee held its legislative hearing on S. 5354 on September 16, one week before the markup.
Realtor.com reported that 20.8% of active listings carried a price reduction in September, up 0.9 percentage points from a year earlier, and active inventory rose 5.4% year over year to more than 1,161,000 homes, 9.1% below typical pre-pandemic levels. The national median list price was $419,250, down 1.4% from a year ago, and homes under contract fell 4.1% year over year for a second straight monthly decline. Median days on market were 61.
Freddie Mac’s survey put the 30-year fixed rate at 7.03% on September 24, up from 6.95% the week before.
HUD OIG issued a 25-page memorandum to HUD General Counsel David Woll comparing admission and termination requirements across public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, project-based rental assistance, Section 202/811, ESG, CoC, HOPWA and HOME for criminal activity, substance use and immigration status. The memo stated that because HUD has not issued regulations implementing PRWORA, it “still remains unclear the extent to which PRWORA applies to any HUD programs in practice,” and that programs not covered by Section 214 “might not impose any eligibility restrictions on the basis of immigration status.” It recounted the November 2025 HUD notice, HUD’s litigation stay in certain states, and the February 18, 2026 DOJ Office of Legal Counsel opinion that partially superseded the notice.
The November 2025 HUD notice the memo analyzes was vacated by the District of Rhode Island on September 21, 2026, three days before the memo’s date.