Latest news with #FairHousingInitiativesProgram
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
West Tennessee legal aid nonprofit says uncertainty caused by DOGE cuts will hurt future clients
West Tennessee Legal Services, which provides legal aid to limited income clients west of the Tennessee River, faces uncertainty over federal funding cuts. (Getty Images) Uncertainty over the continuation of federal fair housing grants under Trump administration cuts is keeping a West Tennessee legal aid nonprofit from helping as many clients as they typically would. West Tennessee Legal Services provides free civil legal aid to limited-income clients in counties west of the Tennessee River, helping people secure or retain housing and meet other family safety needs. The organization gets more than half of its housing services budget from an annual Fair Housing Initiatives Program grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to help people who believe they have been victims of housing discrimination. The Fair Housing Act bars discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status and disability. The funding helps pay for education, outreach, legal casework and investigations, Director of Special Projects Vanessa Bullock said. Bullock served as the nonprofit's Fair Housing Project director and was involved in these grants for many years. She said most of the housing work they do — about 50-65% — benefits people with disabilities. The organization serves around 200 West Tennessee housing clients each year and sub-grants funding to Legal Aid offices in Middle and East Tennessee for similar programs. But on Feb. 27, West Tennessee Legal Services received a letter informing them that the remainder of their $425,000 grant for the year was terminated immediately. The grant was one of 78 fair housing grants scrapped by HUD under the cost-cutting mission of President Donald Trump's newly named Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The termination came with no explanation. West Tennessee Legal Services is used to navigating presidential transitions — every four to eight years, they go through grant re-negotiation when administrations' priorities change. This time, there was no opportunity to have those conversations, Bullock said. 'There's been speculation about why certain grants were cut and certain ones weren't … Did we use too many of their target words in our application when other people didn't? We honestly don't know,' Bullock said. 'In general, it's just further fallout from cutting things without really understanding what they're doing, without clear reason why.' Four fair housing organizations filed a class action lawsuit in March contesting the sudden clawback. After a judge issued a temporary restraining order, HUD reinstated funding for West Tennessee Legal Services — which was not involved in the lawsuit — and others. The judge has since dissolved the order, noting that the lawsuit should be filed in the Court of Federal Claims. 'This decision should not be read as an endorsement of the brusque and seemingly insensitive way in which the terminations were announced,' Massachusetts District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns wrote in his decision. The housing organizations are appealing the dissolution of the restraining order, and the lower court case is stayed in the meantime, court records show. HUD has not sent out fresh termination letters as of May 16. West Tennessee Legal Services is treating the grant as reinstated, for now, but the future remains murky. The first year of the 3-year grant ends on July 31. It's not clear if HUD intends to renegotiate the grants for years two and three, leaving a total $850,000 in question. HUD could not be immediately reached for comment. The organization is stuck in limbo, preparing for the worst and hoping for the best, Bullock said. That means taking on fewer cases than they normally would. If the grant funding doesn't come through after July 31, they will have to reallocate cases to other funding sources. The uncertainty, she said, is causing chaos. 'We could have helped a lot of people with the time we spent trying to figure out the fallout from this,' Bullock said. West Tennessee Legal Services' most typical housing cases involve people of all ages with disabilities. This could mean helping people know their rights and ask for things they are entitled to, like landlord approval for their service animal, or a release from their second-floor apartment lease if a mobility impairment forces them to seek more accessible housing, Bullock said. Other disabilities are not as easily seen. The nonprofit helps people who are in recovery from addiction — considered a disability under the Fair Housing Act — find housing despite rental histories tarnished by their addiction and past behavior. They also help survivors of domestic violence either terminate leases to seek new housing or get other reasonable accommodations like additional locks. Current clients will be taken care of, Bullock said. They may not even be aware that future funding is at risk. But moving those cases to other eligible funding sources has ripple effects. 'It's not necessarily going to affect just housing funds. It's going to affect our whole organization, to some extent, because we're going to be taking funds that our family law unit might have been using to do family law work to do some housing work,' Bullock explained. The loss of (funding) for our agencies, plus the loss of the Tennessee Human Rights Commission happening at the same time is going to lead to people falling into the cracks, – Vanessa Bullock, West Tennessee Legal Services The biggest impact will be for future clients that they will have to turn away, she said. Tennessee's recent law disbanding the Tennessee Human Rights Commission and moving its functions into the Attorney General's Office compounds the confusion, Bullock added. By law, the Attorney General's Office has until June 30 to reassign the now-defunct commission's caseload. 'The loss of (funding) for our agencies, plus the loss of the Tennessee Human Rights Commission happening at the same time is going to lead to people falling into the cracks,' Bullock said. Tennessee House passes measure to dissolve state human rights commission Another consequence of the potential funding loss could be felt by congressional offices and HUD itself, West Tennessee Legal Services Executive Director Ashley Holliday said. The nonprofit's screening process helps educate people about their rights, what the Fair Housing Act protects, and what proof is needed for a successful case, Bullock said. If West Tennessee Legal Services has less resources to take calls and provide education to tenants and landlords alike, those calls are likely to end up going to congressional representatives and HUD instead. 'Frankly, we're constituent services,' Holliday said. 'When congressmen get calls from constituents saying, 'I can't get my Social Security case handled, I need help,' we're one of the agencies that they send their constituents to … This obviously affects the services that we can provide.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Epoch Times
29-04-2025
- Business
- Epoch Times
Trump Admin Blocked Around $430 Billion in Federal Funds, Top Democrats Say
Congressional Democrats said on April 29 that the Trump administration has blocked about $430 billion in federal funding and that they are chronicling how it is stopping the flow of funds. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the top Democrats on the Senate and House appropriations committees, 'Instead of investing in the American people, President Trump is ignoring our laws and ripping resources away,' said Murray and DeLauro. They said the funding that was cut or frozen by the Trump administration had been approved by Congress. The powerful Appropriations committees in the House and the Senate, where Republicans have majority control of both chambers, draft the annual funding bills that Congress passes and sends to the president's desk for his signature to become law. Since taking office in January, Trump has said that he wants to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in the federal government while seeking to terminate various programs that don't align with his administration's priorities. The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was created via an executive order in January by the president and is tasked with those efforts. According to its Related Stories 4/29/2025 4/29/2025 The White House, which has not responded to the Democrats' claims, did not immediately respond to an Epoch Times request for comment. In a news release on Tuesday, Democrats They noted $12 million in canceled funding for the Fair Housing Initiatives Program that gives grants to nonprofits to 'prevent housing discrimination.' They also cited nearly $1 billion for the Green and Resilient Retrofit program; $10 million for the Citizen and Integration Grant program; $80 million in grants and contracts to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and more. The Trump administration is in court fighting to keep many of the administration's cuts to federal agencies. 'The people voted for major government reform, and that's what the people are going to get,' said Musk, a senior presidential adviser and special government employee, in an appearance at the White House in February. 'That's what democracy is all about.' This past week, after Musk's electric vehicle company Tesla posted lower-than-expected profits and revenue for the first quarter of 2025, Musk told Musk said he will continue to support the Trump administration and DOGE 'to make sure that the waste and fraud that we stop does not come roaring back.' In a statement released by the White House, Trump The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Attorneys in fair housing lawsuit fight to keep funding in place
Millions of dollars in federal fair housing grant funding hang in the balance until the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decides where claims about federal funding freezes should be heard. The plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit allege the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, unlawfully terminated $30 million in Congressionally allocated funding to dozens of fair housing organizations nationwide. A legal expert at Duke University says the executive branch does not have the authority to do that. Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Richard G. Stearns agreed to delay proceedings in a lawsuit filed in March by four fair housing organizations — including the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center in Holyoke. The suit names both DOGE and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The stay comes as the 1st Circuit moves to decide whether claims over the federal funding freeze should be heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals. The four organizations assert they were rocked by the loss of funding, which affected 66 organizations nationwide, after the grants were found to contain diversity, equity and inclusion language. The grants were from the Fair Housing Initiatives Program, which helped the organizations weed out housing discrimination in their communities, the plaintiffs said. Stearns reinstated the funds by a temporary restraining order to the organizations on March 25 in a five-minute court hearing in Boston. The temporary restraining order was to be in place until May 16. But last week, Stearns ordered that the grant funding should be dissolved after a Supreme Court decision in a separate case that the 1st Circuit heard. That decision laid the ground work for how Stearns said he would hear this case. Now, the plaintiffs are requesting a pause in the proceedings until a 1st Circuit decision is made. The government has agreed to this request for relief, according to court documents. The 1st Circuit is made up of district courts in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico and Rhode Island. 'We are disappointed that the District Court dissolved the TRO and have filed a notice of appeal,' said Attorney Lila Miller, a partner at Relman Colfax, the Washington, D.C. law firm representing the plaintiffs, in an emailed statement. The grants, she said, are an essential tool for protecting equal access to housing opportunity. Julian Canzoneri, the attorney representing HUD and DOGE, did not return a phone call seeking comment. The 1st Circuit recently heard a case involving the several states, including California and Massachusetts, about grant funding the U.S. Department of Education terminated. The department requested a motion to stay, which the 1st Circuit reviewed. It found that termination letters the DOE sent to the states lacked specific reasons for the grant cancellations, a violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. 'Plaintiffs' appeal presents a serious legal question, the resolution of which will determine the scope and forum for plaintiffs' claims,' said the plaintiffs' motion for a stay, which the government agreed to. The plaintiffs are still pursuing their case against DOGE, alleging that the agency acted beyond its legal power, the court documents said. Jeff Powell, a professor at Duke University's law school who focuses on Constitutional law, said because DOGE is not a governmental agency created by Congress, it has no authority to order HUD to slash millions of dollars in grant funding. 'The president can choose his advisors, and there is no legal reason why presidents can't do that,' he said in a phone interview, 'but DOGE or Mr. Musk have no authority to tell anyone what to do.' Powell explained that the standard view of Congressionally allocated funding is that if the delegation requires a federal department to spend or grant a certain amount of money, 'the president can't impound the funds,' he said. When asked if he thinks DOGE or the Trump administration will heed court rulings in cases going forward, 'it has been our tradition, since James Madison was president in the 19th century, for a president to enforce what the courts say,' Powell said. 'Following the law is a part of our system,' he said. Springfield approves contract for union with no members Mass. couple wins $360K without lawyers but say flawed laws left no choice For Western Mass. country store, grant helped raise a new barn WMass Catholics mourn, celebrate Pope Francis, seen as voice of the poor
Axios
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Fair housing grants next on DOGE chopping block
Ohio's largest legal aid organization stands to lose significant federal funding via DOGE cuts. Why it matters: Lost funding could render Legal Aid of Southeast and Central Ohio unable to help people facing housing discrimination in most of the region. How it works: LASCO provides civil legal services to 36 Ohio counties, focusing largely on helping low-income residents. Programs help people obtain and keep housing, secure public benefits and fund legal cases. Those helped are often domestic violence survivors, families in poverty and people who face discrimination. Catch up quick: On Feb. 27, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and DOGE cut $30 million in congressionally authorized funding for 78 Fair Housing Initiatives Program grants, which fund organizations across the country. Four National Fair Housing Alliance members filed a class action lawsuit March 13 against HUD and DOGE alleging the cuts were unlawful. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order to reinstate the grants but dissolved that order Monday, allowing HUD to move forward with cancellation of funds. Threat level: For LASCO, this would mean the loss of $425,000 a year representing about 70% of the funding for Fair Housing work, senior managing attorney Melissa Benson says. That money pays for LASCO programming and staff, both of which would suffer from cuts. LASCO receives a separate grant that covers the city of Columbus and some other small sources of funding, but not nearly enough to close the gap. What they're saying:"[Fair housing] has really become a big part of our work, and it is something we think really matters and affects the community. To not know the extent of which we're going to be able to provide these services is difficult," Benson says. Between the lines: April is Fair Housing Month, which celebrates "the advancements of equal access to housing." The other side: HUD spokesperson Kasey Lovett says she cannot comment on FHIP grants because of the active legal case, but contends that fair housing enforcement is not being reduced due to the cuts. "To suggest anything else is false," she tells Axios in an email. " See here for the Secretary's recent comments reaffirming the Department's commitment to supporting the Fair Housing Act." She adds: "Funding to external entities is a separate matter from the enforcement the Department will uphold. Therefore, enforcement will not be reduced." What's next: Benson and LASCO expect continued legal challenges, but nothing has been announced.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
DOGE cuts to fair housing grants hit HOME for financial advisor
The Trump administration's possible termination of tens of millions of dollars in funding for fair housing organizations could make building wealth through homeownership more difficult. That's the warning shared last month by Andrew Tudor, an investment advisor with Philadelphia-based Zenith Wealth Partners, about the potential impact of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's planned cuts to Fair Housing Initiatives Program grants under the recommendations of the agency's Department of Government Efficiency task force. One of 66 organizations slated to lose more than $30 million across 78 grants is Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Greater Cincinnati, a nonprofit group that Tudor credited for helping his parents gain approval for a mortgage they used to buy their family's home in 1985. "It's pretty commonly known that the bedrock of the American Dream and financial success is homeownership," Tudor said in an interview. "Having enforcement around equal housing is extremely important." READ MORE: Amid DEI abandonment, what progress can firms show? Through a class action lawsuit, the National Fair Housing Alliance won a temporary victory last month reinstating the grants — but their fate is in limbo amid an array of court cases over moves by President Donald Trump's cabinet and Elon Musk's DOGE teams to pull back spending on programs they deem to be wasteful outlays for diversity, equity and inclusion. For the advocates, the HUD grant cancellations represent an existential threat to civil rights programs under the Fair Housing Act that target discrimination against women, people with disabilities and Black, Hispanic and other minority tenants or homebuyers that exacerbates race-based disparities and other wealth gaps. In addition, they argue that HUD violated the Administrative Procedure Act's ban on arbitrary and capricious decisions. "The impact of this sudden loss of funding to the class members has been immediate and severe for the organizations, their communities, and the principle of fair housing that has been a guiding light for the nation's policies since 1968," the Alliance's March 13 filing stated. "Housing discrimination continues while DOGE and HUD pull the plug on a primary statutory means of redressing it." That concern resonated especially strongly for Tudor, who told the story two years ago in a LinkedIn article of how his parents, Sharon Johnson and Fred Tudor, secured the mortgage for their family's home in the Avondale neighborhood. Even though they had full-time jobs with the U.S. Postal Service, excellent credit and combined annual income that was larger than the total amount of the loan, the local bank denied them a mortgage, according to Tudor, who is Black. Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) sent in a white couple as "testers," and the bank approved that couple's loan. After the organization contacted the bank, Tudor's parents qualified for the mortgage — and the house enabled the family to build generational wealth. "This home has been a pillar in my life and in the lives of my immediate and extended family," Tudor wrote. "It has been one of the tools that we used to provide financial stability for so many, and it almost never was. We talk about the racial wealth gap like it just happened, but it was very intentional. The banks, insurance companies, regulators, legislators and appraisers all played a huge role in its creation and perpetuity. The local, state, and federal governments meticulously orchestrated this racial wealth gap, and the recent stories of stolen home equity through race-biased appraisals and lending practices signal that we will not be closing this gap anytime soon." READ MORE: Fighting systemic racism with estate planning — one client at a time Representatives for HUD didn't respond to inquiries about the lawsuit and funding for fair housing organizations like those of HOME. In a video posted last month to the social media platform X with the caption "Let's set the record straight," Secretary Scott Turner said that HUD has "taken inventory of every program and process to determine when and where the department can be more efficient in the delivery of its statutorily required programs." He pushed back against news reports suggesting that HUD is cutting homeless prevention services, closing field offices en masse or taking away resources from public housing authorities. "I know that you're thinking, 'Are HUD-funded programs going to stop?'" he said. "The short answer is, 'no,' but things are definitely going to look a little bit different. Here's what our actions will and will not do: We will not slow down the department's mission-critical functions." In the case filed by the equal housing organizations in Boston federal court, lawyers for the agency argued that the fair housing programs "confer significant discretion in determining how best to allocate appropriate funds across applicants." "The statute does not constrain the secretary's discretion to determine how best to allocate the funding for each program among many different potential grant recipients," HUD's filing stated. "The Department's decisions in this context are discretionary decisions regarding how to allocate funds, not subject to arbitrary-and-capricious review under the APA." READ MORE: A plan to build Black wealth in one community — and nationwide The March 21 filing included a declaration by the career HUD official who sent the organizations the letter informing them of the termination of their funding. The DOGE team at HUD had cited their programs as incompatible with a half dozen executive orders, such as those "ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferences" and "ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity." "HUD's internal DOGE task force specifically identified that those particular 78 awards were incompatible with one or more of the above executive orders because those awards include language that specifically imposes DEI, DEIA, and/or 'equity' actions, initiatives, plans, programs, grants, contracts, performance requirements, or preferences; and further authorizes the use of federal funds for training, enforcement, and other related activities in a manner for activities beyond the scope of the statutorily enumerated protections of the Fair Housing Act and other civil rights laws," the HUD career senior executive, Matthew Ammon, wrote. "The task force further identified that the use of federal funds for purposes beyond the specific scope of these statutes dilutes and diminishes the availability of federal funds to carry out the specific, statutorily-authorized functions of the Department," he continued. "And the task force identified that the Department is best able to meet its statutory duties under the Fair Housing Act and other civil rights laws by the termination of these awards and the refocus of efforts toward effectuating the plain language of these statutes." Those terminations represent "only a subset of the total number of open FHIP awards, as HUD's award-by-award review determined that not all open FHIP awards are inconsistent with executive orders and no longer effectuating program goals or agency priorities," Ammon added. District Judge Richard Stearns found in favor of the plaintiffs, though, imposing a temporary restraining order on HUD that will be in place until at least May 16. During that span, HUD must "immediately restore plaintiffs to the pre-existing status quo" by reinstating the fair housing grants. However, Stearns based that order on an earlier ruling by the First Circuit Court of Appeals blocking cuts to the Department of Education — and the Supreme Court overruled that decision last week. HUD lawyers subsequently called in an April 7 filing for Stearns to drop his order and impose a stay keeping the cuts in place during the two lawsuits' proceedings. READ MORE: The impact of the 'racial will gap' on wealth The legal wrangling around DOGE's cuts across the government could go on for months, if not years. In the meantime, any programs aimed at "correcting for race and having race-conscious provisions" as a means of narrowing the racial wealth gap face a threat that begs the question of "who can then take up the mantle" and what will be the effect to homeownership, according to Michael Neal, a senior fellow in the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute. The Institute is a nonprofit organization that describes itself as providing "data and evidence to help advance upward mobility and equity." The potential cuts to HUD's fair housing grants may ultimately affect the degree that prospective home buyers can seek and qualify for mortgages based on their job and income stability, Neal said. "Unless you're buying all-cash, you have to make some sort of decision, you have to come to some conclusion about what your life is going to look like over the next five to seven years," he said. "This type of action totally contributes to a broader uncertainty and instability, specifically in a sector that relies on those two characteristics in order for people to be successful in homeownership." In Cincinnati, Tudor's parents were successful in renovating the home into four separate apartment units that hosted family members and tenants and served as the location of an infant daycare business. He and his two older brothers attended college thanks to home equity lines of credit from the house. Through a will and trust and other estate planning, the family plans to maintain its ownership of the home into the future. The centrality of the home — and the HOME organization's role in Tudor's parents buying it four decades ago — prompted Tudor to raise the alarm on social media about the possible cuts, he said. "This is our time to lean in," Tudor said. "It's very easy to take organizations like this for granted, and now is the time for us to really show support for organizations that over the last 50 years have been showing support to us and lifting up our most vulnerable citizens." READ MORE: Zenith adds planner on way to creating $1 billion in wealth At about $425,000, the grant that could be terminated had supplied funding for discrimination investigations in rental properties and mortgage lending and individual counseling sessions for roughly 350 local tenants who reported complaints to HOME, Executive Director Elisabeth Risch told a Cincinnati NPR affiliate last month. "We just did this big report to show that Black borrowers are denied two times as often as white borrowers, even more for higher-income borrowers," Risch said. "What our termination says is that we can't follow up on that. That's what's been pulled out from under us." And that's why HOME supporters like Tudor tie the DOGE cuts of fair housing grants directly to the racial wealth gap and the housing segregation, redlining and discrimination that have played such a large role in generating that racial disparity. "The first step is acknowledging that the wealth disparity was created intentionally — that's hard for some folks," he said. "We are not in a place of equality today, let alone equity, for the past transgressions and the past harms done by local, state and federal policy."
