Judge Blocks HUD From Cutting Off More Than 100 Fair-Housing Groups and Steering $25 Million to a Single Law School

U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston blocked HUD on Aug. 26 from restructuring the Fair Housing Initiatives Program, ruling the agency failed to give a reasoned explanation for sweeping changes to a grant program Congress created in 1987. HUD announced in July that it would allocate none of its fiscal 2025 appropriation to private enforcement initiatives or multi-year grants. Instead of the usual 100-plus grants of $75,000 to $425,000, HUD planned to spend $46 million of the $56 million appropriated on five grants, $25 million of it to a law school.

The order also reaches conditions HUD attached requiring recipients not to use funds to support "gender ideology" or "illegal immigration." Joun wrote that HUD's "pithy description falls woefully short of the mark in both form and substance" and that it was "hard to see how or where Defendants relied on relevant data."

The ruling came in a July suit by the National Fair Housing Alliance and the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center. HUD did not respond to a request for comment.