Amid HUD changes to funding to help the homeless, Georgia groups try to plan for what's next

Caption

Heather Sims, left, conducts an interview at a homeless encampment in east Macon during the 2024 Point in Time count.

Credit: Grant Blankenship/GPB News

Homeless service organizations in Georgia are unsure about what funding they will have to work with in the coming year because of changes in mission at the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development — changes currently being challenged in federal court. 

Many of the homeless service providers who rely on money from HUD use what's called a supportive housing model. That's where a roof comes before services like mental health care or substance abuse recovery. For instance, 100 new supportive housing units opened in Atlanta just this month.  

In November, the Trump administration flipped the script to support more transitional housing. That means treatment first and a roof later.  

That meant something like a suspension at the midpoint of the current two-year HUD funding cycle for the nation’s Continuum of Care, or CoC, organizations with a notice that CoCs would have to reapply for funding for the second half of the cycle.  

Re-applications are due by mid-January. A federal judge has put in place an preliminary injunction against the changes as a result of a suit against HUD by  a coalition of states attorneys general and other interest groups. But already the philosophical shift is forcing the recipients of Georgia’s over $75 million in HUD funding for homeless relief to rethink how they will work.

COLUMBUS 

Pat Frey of the United Way of the Chattahoochee Valley in Columbus said the changes could derail their work, which mostly focused on rehousing domestic violence victims and their families.

“Our community alone was turned upside down," Frey said. "We went from having, you know, $1.4 million or $1.5 million available to just over $500,000."

Frey said that’s because the HUD changes essentially recategorized their supportive housing work as only worthy of 30% of their current federal funding. Frey said now her organization is up against an incredibly tight deadline for reapplication to justify what they do to federal regulators.  

“If they want to switch the focus from permanent housing solutions to transitional housing solutions, that is all doable,” Frey said. “But it's not doable in a span of 60 days when you have programs that are operating. They're going to have to have transition time.” 

In which Frey hopes the community can find grassroots solutions to fund rapid rehousing. Meanwhile, she only expects more people in Columbus to need help in the future.  

“We know that because rents have gone up 43% in the past three years — just in our community,” Frey said, "which has led to more people becoming homeless for the first time than ever before."

She expects that to be reflected in Columbus’ contribution to the annual National Point in Time census of homeless people in January.  

MACON 

Carlton Williams manages rapid rehousing in Macon-Bibb County as an employee of the private nonprofit Macon-Bibb Economic Opportunity Council. Historically, Williams’ program, like Pat Frey’s in Columbus, has mostly helped women and families find and pay for stable housing.  

He said even amid the changes, he expects to maintain the over $330,000 in annual HUD funding his program receives, because the program has made a fundamental change: where before he could only suggest other social services to the people he helps, now they will have to seek those services out as a prerequisite to housing assistance.   

“The clients now will have to be accountable for something,” Williams said. “Let's say if they're having, struggling with finances. They'll have to take financial literacy classes. And they'll be required to do that in order to get the payment. Where before we couldn't make them do anything.” 

Williams and the Macon-Bibb EOC will receive a one-time infusion of $150,000 dollars from the Macon-Bibb County Commission, a piece of the last of the commission’s American Rescue Plan funds. That money will start a new effort aimed at helping families avoid eviction and homelessness.  

Macon-Bibb EOC estimates $150,000 is enough to help eight households in Macon, where about a third of households live below the poverty line.  

ATHENS 

Marci Irwin oversees the administration of HUD funds at the Athens-Clarke County Housing and Community Development Department. She said the changes to the language in the HUD grant would lead to an almost complete restructuring of their approach to homelessness in Athens. 

"If it went forward, it looked like we would probably lose about 45 units of permanent housing,” she said. 

That includes units used in rapid rehousing, a short-term intervention used as a bridge to permanent housing, different from temporary housing. There are 63 permanent housing units in Athens-Clarke County funded by the Continuum of Care for individuals and families.  

Irwin said they have “a little bit of breathing room” to figure out what the federal government's changes to its grant requirements will mean for them, because the grant cycle for fiscal year 2025 funds from HUD to organizations in Athens-Clarke County started mostly in November.  

For now, a review of applications by local organizations for 2026 grant applications is on hold, Irwin said. She’s hoping the federal government’s shift in priorities doesn’t mean a complete abandonment of the supportive housing model.  

“I think some folks really need that permanent supportive housing model, but transitional housing definitely has a place in the system,” Irwin said. “Transitioning from one major focus for so many years to abruptly change has been what’s so frustrating.” 

ATLANTA 

This year, the Atlanta Continuum of Care had a budget of around $14.5 million to create housing for the city’s chronically homeless residents. Partners for HOME is responsible for carrying out projects approved by the CoC. 

CEO Cathryn Vassell said during this HUD funding pause they’re looking into creating a donor fund to cover budget shortfalls expected to begin in February.  

“So in February, it's about $100,000 that we will need to cover. And that number grows steadily as projects expire,” Vassell said. “We will be raising about $3.5 million from philanthropy in order to fill gaps.” 

The majority of Atlanta’s CoC funding goes towards permanent supportive housing. They serve about 900 households annually. 

Vassell said they’re advocating for HUD to keep current funding long enough for local organizations to adjust to any program changes. 

“We need that extra time to be able to plan for what that transition might look like for them to ensure that we don't have hundreds of people coming back to the street,” she said. 

AUGUSTA 

Augusta-Richmond County’s Continuum of Care received far less funds from HUD in fiscal year 2025 — $459,057 — compared to Macon, Columbus and Athens, which are all smaller in terms of population size.  

That doesn’t make the pause on the current grant cycle any less frustrating, said Nomi Stanton, volunteer chair of the Augusta Homeless Task Force and executive director of GAP Ministries.  

“To have it pulled back obviously made us a little bit uneasy,” she said. “But it is also pushing us to look in other directions, because we absolutely have to find a solution.”  

The problem: an affordable housing crisis that Stanton said is pushing more and more families in her community into poverty.  

“Right now, we have more families staying in our shelter than we ever have,” Stanton said. “And I think that's incredibly telling.” 

Augusta-Richmond County could already have trouble reaching HUD funds because of an administrative error reported earlier this year, where officials in the city Housing and Community Development department failed to submit data from the Continuum of Care’s annual point-in-time count by a federal deadline.  

HUD requires that Continuums of Care submit PIT count data to be considered in its annual competition for grant money.  

Augusta’s Continuum of Care is now collaborating with the United Way of the Central Savannah River Area (CSRA) to seek other funding opportunities and spread the workload.  

Building local partnerships, and advocating for more support from local government, is increasingly essential to keep housing people, Stanton said, especially without a promise of taxpayer dollars.  

“We don't want people staying in a hotel; we don't want people in temporary housing like a shelter,” Stanton said. “We want them to stand on their own two feet and all of us want to work ourselves out of a job.”