TAKE ACTION: More than 1,200 people in Maine could potentially lose their housing over the next year and be forced out onto the street. The impacts to communities across the state would be devastating. Please contact your members of Congress to tell them that HUD funding must prioritize permanent supportive housing!
Last fall, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced plans to massively cut funding for permanent supportive housing — a proven solution to homelessness. Advocates nationwide immediately took action to protect this funding, which supports 170,000 people across the United States with critical housing and services each year. While the notice of funding opportunity (NOFO) is scheduled to be released on June 1, 2026, the President’s FY2027 budget eliminates the Continuum of Care program. It is obvious that the Administration will make another attempt to end these programs.
Defunding and undermining permanent supportive housing programs will impact about 1,200 people in Maine and over 170,000 people across the country. Individuals and families in these successful programs will be forced to return to homelessness and, due to the shortage of shelter beds, may experience unsheltered homelessness for the first time. If this happens, we will soon see more tents and encampments popping up throughout our state.
The Continuum of Care (CoC) Program is a HUD initiative designed to promote community-wide commitment to ending homelessness by coordinating housing and supportive services for individuals and families experiencing homelessness. This includes youth and people fleeing domestic violence. It provides funding to nonprofits, state and local governments, and tribal entities to quickly rehouse unhoused people while minimizing trauma and dislocation.
Permanent supportive housing is lifesaving for our neighbors. Cutting these programs will lead to more costs for our communities as people lose their homes and need to rely more on emergency services.
What are the changes that HUD is proposing?
If HUD follows through on the dramatic funding cuts that they proposed last fall, Maine homelessness services would be cut by almost two-thirds, and would need to prioritize high-barrier, short-term programs that impose work and treatment requirements. These priorities ignore decades of research showing that low-barrier, housing first approaches are not only more successful in getting people into housing and helping them stay there, but they also save the community millions of dollars each year. The cost to help a person stay housed pales in comparison to the cost of police calls, emergency room visits, medical transport, and jail stays they can incur while homeless.
Making cuts to successful housing programs would:
- Reduce access to permanent housing at the exact moment that rent, evictions, and unsheltered homelessness are increasing.
- Undermine harm reduction, despite overwhelming evidence that low-barrier engagement is essential for housing stabilization.
- Reward policing and punitive responses, including encampment sweeps — strategies that consistently increase trauma and prolong homelessness.
- Elevate Transitional Housing, which is more expensive than current funded programs and has poorer long-term outcomes, particularly for Black, Latino, LGBTQ+, and disabled residents.
- Force programs to ignore best practices and proven solutions in favor of implementing treatment-first policies to receive essential funding.
In Maine, about 65% of the people who will be impacted by these cuts live in rural areas with a lack of shelters and other critical services that could help return people to housing.
“We talk a lot about numbers, but each number is a human being … and they are going through one of the hardest times of their lives,” says Dan Hodgkins, Preble Street Senior Director of Social Work. “And the truth is, in order to have an effective homeless response system in Maine, we need federal dollars, state dollars, all working together.”
Please contact your U.S. Senators and Representatives and tell them that HUD funding must prioritize permanent supportive housing!
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Staff highlight: Tim Stokes – Housing problem-solving
Preble Street staff are #CompassionInAction, and we want you to get to know them! This month we’re introducing you to Tim Stokes, Case Worker, Rapid Re-Housing Program! How long have you worked at Preble Street? Since January 2025. What do you like best about your role? Everyone’s situation is different – but a stable housing arrangement often depends on many things coming together. I enjoy tracking down these things and connecting resources to help others regain a sense of autonomy.