ProPublica reported that Oregon Housing and Community Services director Andrea Bell did not disclose her husband's job at a consulting firm that advised two Portland-area projects seeking state money, including a 200-unit Clackamas County development with $36 million in state funding, until the day the outlet asked. In San Francisco, HomeRise's board agreed to wind the nonprofit down over one to two years, leaving the city to find new operators for 17 buildings housing more than 1,500 residents. The Ninth Circuit paused the order for more than 2,500 housing units on the West Los Angeles VA campus until Dec. 10 while the government weighs a Supreme Court petition, and Judge David O. Carter set an Oct. 27 hearing on who will manage Los Angeles's roughly $240 million a year in federal homeless funding after LAHSA. A federal judge suspended the Sept. 30 lapse of $56.1 million in HUD housing counseling funds two days after GAO concluded the pocket rescission was not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act, and FHFA set its inspector general's FY2027 budget at $20 million, a 61.3% cut. The Portland section ran thin at two items, so the national section carries one over its cap.
ProPublica reported that Oregon Housing and Community Services director Andrea Bell did not name her husband's employer, the affordable-housing consulting firm JH Brawner, on her state ethics disclosures until Sept. 23, the day ProPublica asked about it. The firm consulted on two Portland-area housing authority projects seeking state money from her agency: Park Place, a 200-unit Clackamas County project with $36 million in state funding, and Aloha 209th in Washington County, awaiting a $17.5 million subsidy. Bell said in a statement that she took the concerns "seriously" and had sought an advisory opinion from the Oregon Government Ethics Commission; three former officials familiar with state ethics law told ProPublica the lack of disclosure "merited review."
Bell filed amended economic-interest disclosures for the last three years on Sept. 23, 2026; OHCS has distributed more than $1.4 billion in state funding for rent-restricted apartments over the past five years.
KATU · 2026-10-01 · on housing production claims in the first Kotek–Drazan debate
Gov. Tina Kotek and Republican challenger Christine Drazan met Thursday night at the University of Oregon in Eugene for the first debate of the 2026 governor's race. Kotek said Oregon's housing starts were up 11.5% comparing the first six months of this year to the same period last year and credited permitting and infrastructure changes; Drazan called Kotek's housing policies "an abysmal failure" and said the state had "almost 10-year record lows in housing production." KATU noted Kotek secured $200 million from lawmakers in 2023 for homelessness and housing.
The election is Nov. 3, 2026; the debate was hosted by KVAL with the Oregon Journalism Project, Lookout Eugene-Springfield and the UO School of Journalism and Communication.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday temporarily paused U.S. District Judge David O. Carter's order requiring more than 2,500 housing units on the 400-acre West Los Angeles VA campus while the federal government decides whether to petition the U.S. Supreme Court. The panel gave VA officials until Dec. 10 to decide and said that if they do not appeal by then "the stay will be lifted immediately." Plaintiffs' attorney Mark Rosenbaum said the government has "lost every time they have taken this to court."
A Ninth Circuit panel denied the government's request to halt construction in September 2026; Carter's underlying order dates to 2024 in a case filed by unhoused veterans in 2023.
Nardello & Co., the court-appointed monitor of the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights settlement, filed its first report in federal court on Wednesday, summarizing site visits to dozens of shelters and permanent housing projects. One 225-unit building had 83 vacancies with move-ins paused for remediation after a guest tried to steal copper wire from the water system, and a county master-leased project had 102 occupants in 169 beds, which its manager attributed to water damage, elevator outages and copper theft. The report said agencies rely on "numerous databases, self-reported information, manual data transfers, and decentralized reporting practices," and that staff at more than half the sites visited declined to answer questions or allow access.
Judge Carter named Nardello & Co. in May 2026 to monitor the 2022 settlement, which requires the city to create thousands of shelter and housing beds; he denied a receivership motion in 2025.
LAist · 2026-09-30 · on Judge Carter's Oct. 27 hearing on LAHSA's successor
At a Wednesday hearing, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter scheduled an Oct. 27 hearing he called "our decision-making day on so many matters" on who will administer roughly $240 million a year in federal homeless funding after LAHSA relinquishes the role, and said he wants funds transferred to L.A. County by January if the county is chosen. Carter said "The watchdog wasn't watching, and the money got distributed without accountability." City staff estimated a city homeless services department would take up to two years to build; prosecutors have so far charged six people connected to L.A. homeless service providers.
The LA CoC Board voted Sept. 23 to advance a proposal designating the county as collaborative applicant for HUD funds, subject to approval by the CoC general membership; the county moved roughly $300 million of its annual homelessness funding to its new in-house department in July.
HomeRise's board agreed Thursday to what a spokesperson called "an orderly resident-centered wind-down" over one to two years, requiring the city to transition operations and supportive services at 17 complexes housing more than 1,500 residents to new providers. The Chronicle reported the nonprofit received $240 million in public funds over a recent four-year period and that the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing announced in late July it would not renew four of nine supportive-services contracts. The Chronicle described the shutdown as without precedent for a provider of its size in the city.
The city placed HomeRise on its most severe level of nonprofit monitoring in March 2026 after a resident's death at Jazzie Collins Apartments.
The Albuquerque City Council unanimously approved a fifth supplemental agreement with Holland & Hart LLP adding $1.6 million for the city's defense in LaDella Williams, et al. v. City of Albuquerque, raising the contract's maximum value to $2.66 million. The city has paid $1.368 million in legal fees and litigation expenses so far and said it has made more than 20 witnesses available for depositions. The class action, filed in December 2022 by unhoused residents over citations, arrests, fines and seizure of belongings during encampment clearings, is funded from the city's Risk Management Fund; the city said it cannot estimate the lawsuit's final cost.
District Judge Joshua Allison certified the case as a class action on Oct. 2, 2025, and the city appealed that decision to the New Mexico Court of Appeals on Oct. 17, 2025.
The Uptown Connect development at Albuquerque's Uptown transit hub secured $31.2 million in new financing: $23.8 million in private activity bonds approved by the New Mexico State Board of Finance on Sept. 15 and $7.4 million in loans approved by the Housing New Mexico Mortgage Finance Authority board on Sept. 16. The Bernalillo County Commission on Sept. 22 unanimously approved up to $23.8 million in project revenue bonds plus a 17-year property tax exemption. The project has been scaled back to 198 apartments, 176 of them affordable, at a cost of about $111 million; the county expects construction to begin in the first quarter of 2027.
City Desk reported in September 2025 that the project was expected to cost about $120 million with 239 apartments, and the county had previously authorized $46 million in revenue bonds.
Durham cleared an encampment at Fayetteville and Pilot streets near the American Tobacco Trail after a police operation on Tuesday that the Durham Police Department called "Operation Safe Passage"; by Wednesday morning all but one person had left. City Manager Bo Ferguson said there had been more than 700 calls for service at the location this year, including two homicides, and officers said they seized two handguns, more than 30 grams of crack cocaine and more than $9,000 in cash. The city said its outreach team had approached people at the site multiple times and that they declined services; advocates quoted by the paper said sweeps criminalize homelessness without addressing housing shortages.
Ferguson authorized clearance of the Oakwood Park encampment in April, and that park was closed and fenced off in July; city data cited by the paper put Durham's homeless population at more than 2,000 people.
Idaho Statesman · 2026-10-01 · on New Path II, a 95-unit permanent supportive housing building
New Path II, the city-sponsored expansion of Boise's New Path permanent supportive housing development west of downtown, opened this week with 95 units for people exiting homelessness, joining the original 40-unit building. The project was financed with two types of federal low-income housing tax credits plus $5.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act money routed through the city. The Statesman reported that New Path I produced about $11.1 million in savings and cost avoidance over its first six years, and that the U.S. Treasury in 2024 promised Boise up to $6.6 million if it can show the housing-first approach reduces health and judicial costs.
Boise's most recent point-in-time count found 772 people experiencing homelessness in January 2025, of whom 126 were unsheltered.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb issued an order late Wednesday in National Urban League et al. v. Trump et al. suspending the Sept. 30 deadline that would otherwise have caused $56.1 million in FY2025 HUD Housing Counseling Assistance funds to lapse, while the court considers the ten nonprofit plaintiffs' request for broader relief. The order followed a Sept. 29 complaint alleging HUD unlawfully withheld appropriated money and retaliated against grantees for their viewpoints; WRE News reported the order did not resolve those allegations and that the government argued the court lacks power to override a congressional deadline. The court directed the parties to continue briefing through Oct. 19.
The White House's Sept. 25 rescission proposal sought to cancel $56.1 million of the $58 million appropriated for the program.
U.S. Government Accountability Office · 2026-09-29 · on GAO's finding on the FY2026 pocket rescission
GAO issued a legal decision on Sept. 29 reviewing the President's Sept. 25 special message proposing rescissions from 11 appropriation accounts, for which OMB had also issued a reapportionment letter withholding the proposed amounts from obligation. GAO concluded that the Impoundment Control Act does not allow the President to withhold appropriated funds through their expiration date merely by proposing a rescission, writing that "the President may not force the expiration of budget authority Congress has already enacted and did not rescind."
The special message was transmitted five days before the fiscal year ended Sept. 30; WRE News reported the affected accounts include HUD's Housing Counseling Assistance program.
FHFA allocated $20 million to its Office of Inspector General for fiscal 2027, a 61.3% reduction from FY2026 levels and below the $55 million in the administration's own FY2027 budget request; FHFA's Sept. 30 release called the OIG "an extraordinary budgetary outlier among its peer OIGs," saying it had requested 16% of the agency's operating budget against a government-wide average of about 2%. Acting Principal Deputy Inspector General James Hodge wrote to Congress that the cut would force staffing reductions of 70-80% and "the discontinuance of essentially all criminal investigations." Eleven Senate Banking Committee Democrats called the decision unlawful in an Oct. 1 letter.
Federal News Network reported the OIG's criminal enforcement program has produced more than 1,270 convictions since 2011.
NBC News reported that at a White House complex meeting this summer, an aide to Stephen Miller presented a plan to make it easier for states to institutionalize mentally ill homeless people through a policy change that NBC said would weaken the rights of millions of disabled Americans. According to the report, after the Justice Department issued a memo making institutionalization easier, it began abandoning cases protecting disabled people's right to live in the community rather than in institutions.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued its opinion on the Olmstead integration mandate in June 2026, following the July 2025 executive order "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets."
The Washington Post · 2026-09-29 · on a Washington Post review of homelessness spending in 12 cities
The Post reviewed the budgets of 12 U.S. cities with large homeless populations and found combined spending on homeless services rose more than 75 percent over the past five years. The piece opened at Phoenix's Safe Outdoor Space, a 200-tent site the Post said costs the city about $6.5 million a year, or $27,000 per structure, to operate for about 300 people.
Phoenix's city council approved a $5 million master-leasing pilot on Sept. 23, 2026.
Matt Jones, nominated for HUD assistant secretary for housing and FHA commissioner, testified Thursday before a Senate Banking Committee hearing at which only four members were present, the morning after the Senate adjourned for recess; ranking member Elizabeth Warren called holding the hearing during recess "irresponsible." Jones told Sen. Mike Crapo that "the American people understand we need more supply," cited the ROAD to Housing Act and manufactured-housing finance, and said more than 150 regulatory requirements in the single-family program had been cut during his tenure. If confirmed he would oversee an insured portfolio Scotsman Guide put at more than 8 million loans and over $1.6 trillion in unpaid principal.
The nomination was announced in mid-September; the Mortgage Bankers Association and Community Home Lenders of America sent letters supporting Jones.
Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) reintroduced the Eviction Crisis Act of 2026, which would create a permanent $3 billion-a-year Emergency Assistance Program administered by HUD as a competitive grant to state, local, tribal and territorial governments, according to NLIHC's summary of the bill. The bill would also fund eviction data collection and add renter protections in tenant screening reports. The release cited Congressional Research Service figures that 49.4 percent of renter households were cost-burdened in 2024, and 15,953 eviction filings in Denver in 2025.
NLIHC listed the introduction date as Sept. 24, 2026; the bill was endorsed by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, NLIHC, Bipartisan Policy Center Action and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.
HousingWire, citing Bloomberg, reported that FHFA plans within weeks to direct Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to accept "bi-merge" credit reports drawn from two of the three bureaus instead of the current tri-merge requirement, with an announcement possible at the Mortgage Bankers Association conference in Chicago on Oct. 12 and an effective date one to three months later. FHFA did not respond to HousingWire's request for comment. The report followed Director Bill Pulte's Sept. 29 move to a single pricing grid treating VantageScore 4.0 as equivalent to Classic FICO, reversing earlier GSE grids that had assumed VantageScore overstated creditworthiness by about 20 points.
A bi-merge option was proposed under FHFA Director Sandra Thompson during the Biden administration and delayed over implementation challenges.
Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage at 7.28% for the week of Oct. 1, up from 7.03% the prior week and 6.34% a year earlier. Freddie Mac's chief economist said the housing market "continues to be supported by favorable economic conditions."
The Sept. 24 reading of 7.03% was itself up from 6.95% the week before.
Tax Credit Advisor · 2026-09-28 · on the ROAD to Housing Act's new CDBG new-construction authority
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (Public Law 119-101, enacted July 11) made new home construction an eligible CDBG use, capped at 20 percent of each recipient's annual allocation for awards issued in FY2027 and beyond. A Tax Credit Advisor analysis of FY2026 allocations ($3.298 billion across 1,302 awards) put the theoretical ceiling at $659.6 million, with a median of $178,796 per recipient. HUD had not published implementation guidance as of publication.
The 50 largest CDBG grantees received 44 percent of FY2026 allocated funding.
2026-10-05 — Vancouver City Council work session on the city manager's recommended 2027/28 biennial budget, which includes continued Bridge Shelter operation (source)
2026-10-12 — FHFA Director Pulte expected at the MBA Annual Convention in Chicago, where a bi-merge credit-report directive could be announced (source)
2026-10-13 — Portland Housing Bureau community roundtable on the Unified Housing Strategy, District 1, 6–8 pm, Rosewood Initiative (source)
2026-10-13 — Comments due on HUD's notice of research justifying additional CoC incentives for certain activities to reduce homelessness (source)
2026-10-14 — FY2026 CoC application deadline for CA-600 (Los Angeles) only, 8 pm ET (source)
2026-10-19 — Briefing deadline in National Urban League v. Trump (D.D.C.) on the $56.1 million housing counseling rescission (source)
2026-10-27 — Judge Carter hearing on who will administer Los Angeles's roughly $240 million a year in federal homeless funding after LAHSA (source)
2026-11-16 — Vancouver City Council public hearing and adoption of the 2027/28 budget (source)
2026-12-10 — Deadline for the VA to decide whether to petition the Supreme Court in the West LA VA housing case; the Ninth Circuit stay lifts if no appeal is filed (source)