Connecticut, along with 19 other states and the District of Columbia, won a federal court case last week blocking the Trump administration from reducing housing support for thousands of homeless residents. The ruling preserves more than $3 billion in homelessness relief funding nationally and me ans about 170,000 people can continue to receive housing support and mental health services. However, the court did not permanently stop the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development from making similar changes in the future, according to the court order.  “The Trump Administration tried to hold homelessness funding hostage to an unlawful political agenda. We sued, and we won,” Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement. “The court made it clear that the HUD cannot impose illegal conditions that would have thrown people out on the streets and decimated housing supports nationwide.” In November 2025, HUD announced changes to funding for what are called “continuums of care,” or the regional groups that organize efforts to address homelessness. Those changes prioritized funding for programs that require sobriety, push people into stays at psychiatric facilities, ask about immigration status and recognize only two genders. For years, HUD had favored a “Housing First” approach to homelessness, which follows the theory that underlying issues can be more easily addressed for a person once they have secure housing. The Trump administration has taken a different approach, saying in 2025 that the prevailing approach had failed to address “the root causes of homelessness, including illicit drugs and mental illness.” In response to the ruling last week, a HUD spokesperson wrote, in an emailed statement, “HUD fully stands by our objective to reform America’s failed homelessness system, which has relied almost exclusively on permanently warehousing the homeless at exorbitant taxpayer cost while ignoring root causes. The ‘Housing First’ approach has funded this self-serving homeless industrial complex, enabling dangerous encampments, addiction, and government dependency.” Continuums of care provided rental aid to nearly 6,000 households in Connecticut, as of 2025. Many of those formerly homeless people are in permanent supportive housing, which means they have disabilities and receive services at their homes. Connecticut Balance of State, a statewide group of homelessness services agencies, received roughly $75 million in federal continuums of care funding last year. Millions more went to local homelessness agencies across the state. Meanwhile, Connecticut’s homeless population has been rising. It reached 3,487 in early 2026, up 3% from a year earlier, according to an annual count conducted by the state. Homelessness in Connecticut also rose year-over-year in 2024, by 13%, and in 2025, by 9%. The states that sued HUD last fall argued that the policy changes to the continuums of care program violated the Administrative Procedure Act and exceeded Congress’s power over government spending. In her decision last week, District Judge Mary S. McElroy wrote that HUD “failed to substantively consider the impact that a rapid, untimely overhaul would have on the organizations that administer these programs and the individuals that rely upon them.”  ...read more read less