New HUD rules put $26M of King County's homelessness funding at risk

The Trump administration announced dramatic changes to federal funding for homelessness services that could jeopardize tens of millions of dollars Seattle and King County rely on to get people off the streets and keep them housed.

The administration on Monday issued a notice of funding laying out the terms agencies must meet to receive grant money next year. The notice marks the administration's latest effort to force governments away from an evidence-based approach known as "Housing First" that focuses on housing people without any deadlines or preconditions, which previously accounted for 90% of federal funding.

With the new announcement, the administration shifts about a third of the $4 billion available nationally toward short-term programs that aim to make homeless people self-sufficient over a limited time period.

The new funding rules also give priority to regions that emphasize public safety in their approach to homelessness by clearing encampments or discouraging drug use.

Seattle and King County have been among the leading adopters of Housing First programs and have received roughly $65 million from the federal government each year, largely to support those programs. That helps maintain housing for about 4,500 households around King County.

Under the new rules, about $26 million of the region's federal support is most at risk.

The changes threaten to push more people in the region outside, said Callie Craighead, spokesperson for King County Executive Girmay Zahilay, in a statement.

"Federal restrictions and limitations on permanent supportive housing will have devastating impacts in communities and roll back years of progress to bring housing stability to the region," Craighead said in a statement.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development tried to make similarly drastic shifts to homelessness funding last fall in the middle of an existing grant cycle. A judge blocked the changes as lawsuits, which involved King County and the state of Washington, play out.

But now officials may have little recourse since HUD has wide latitude to set criteria for its grants.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner said the steep increases in homelessness over the last decade are evidence of Housing First's failure. He said permanent supportive housing programs that follow the model encourage drug use, exacerbate crime and leave people dependent on government assistance.

This argument is largely not backed by research.

The notice of funding names Seattle directly, citing a city-created report that surveyed neighbors of a permanent supportive housing building downtown, who said that they didn't feel safe in their neighborhood. It also pointed to a 282% increase in overdose deaths in such buildings in King County between 2020 and 2023, during the height of the fentanyl crisis in the region.

"Housing alone will not solve a crisis driven by addiction and mental illness," Turner said in the funding announcement. "Under President Trump's leadership, HUD is making necessary reforms to put recovery first."

But homelessness service providers said housing is only the foundation for these programs.

"‘Housing First' implies there's more than just housing, just right in the name there," said Daniel Malone, executive director of the Downtown Emergency Service Center. "Done right, there are very significant services brought to bear that are really essential to success for individuals."

Malone said sometimes those services may not be funded well enough. But that's not a problem with the Housing First model, he said, which remains the best-studied and most effective approach to get people off the street.

The reason homelessness has increased, he and other advocates said, is not because of Housing First but because it has not been scaled to a level that would keep up with rising housing costs.

"Study after study has shown that is the biggest driver, and federal housing investments have made a difference but have not been big enough to keep up," Alison Eisinger, executive director of the Seattle/King County Coalition on Homelessness, said in a statement.

In the announcement, HUD said the homelessness funding system had become overly skewed toward permanent housing projects as the only solution for homelessness. Meanwhile, over the last two decades, the agency said short-term programs focused on self-sufficiency, which are known as transitional housing, had fallen by nearly 60%.

But the country stopped relying on transitional housing programs, Malone said, because they didn't show the same results as the Housing First approach.

He said an expansion of transitional housing could help if it means more homeless people getting services. But he said the administration's rules would mean cutting existing permanent housing, which serves people with the most severe issues.

The King County Regional Homelessness Authority is in charge of requesting federal homelessness funding. At the latest board meeting, staff said the agency intends to open local applications for the federal grant funding on June 10 and develop a list of projects to submit by Aug. 10.

Spokesperson Lisa Edge said while maintaining funding for permanent supportive housing is important, they're developing recommendations to fit within HUD's new guidelines and ensure minimal disruption to existing services.

"Providers in the region are already doing the work that HUD wants to uplift," she said in a statement.

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This story was originally published June 3, 2026 at 6:37 AM.