A Sept. 30 Deadline, Months of Court Fights, and What They Mean for Richmond's Homeless Services Network

By Courtney Turrin · September 29, 2026 · 7 min read read

Category: Local News

A federal deadline this week will decide millions of dollars in funding for the coalition behind Richmond's homeless response system, after months of court fights over new rules.

A federal deadline this week will decide millions of dollars in funding for the coalition of agencies that runs Richmond's homeless response system, after months of court fights over the rules governing how that money gets distributed.

Sometime before 8 p.m. Wednesday, a regional coalition of homeless service agencies will submit one application to the federal government on behalf of the whole Richmond region. Whether the new rules behind that application hold up is still being litigated, nearly three months after Virginia and a coalition of other states first sued to block them.

The Deadline, and the Lawsuit Behind It

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) opened its fiscal 2026 Continuum of Care competition on June 1, making $4.04 billion available nationally, including a $1.3 billion set-aside for new transitional housing and support services projects. That set-aside would redirect funding away from renewing existing permanent supportive housing and rapid rehousing programs, the kind that keep people housed long-term, toward new transitional housing projects instead. Virginia's Office of the Attorney General has described the set-aside as functioning as a de facto cap on new permanent housing funding. Virginia joined a coalition of states suing HUD over it on July 2, arguing the change violated federal rulemaking law.

A federal district court in Rhode Island agreed, vacating the funding notice on Aug. 7. HUD appealed, and on Sept. 16 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit stayed that ruling, finding HUD had made a strong showing it would ultimately win. HUD reopened the competition two days later, with a new deadline of 8 p.m. Sept. 30. The underlying lawsuit hasn't been resolved. HUD is still required to announce awards by Dec. 1, a statutory deadline that shaped the appeals court's decision to let the competition proceed while the case continues.

What the Coalition Actually Does

The application due Wednesday isn't filed by any single nonprofit. It's the product of the Greater Richmond Continuum of Care, a coalition of more than 40 member organizations spanning the city of Richmond and the counties of Chesterfield, Henrico, Hanover, Goochland, Powhatan, Charles City and New Kent. Coalition programs served 8,939 people in the most recently reported year, with 13 agencies currently receiving the coordinated federal and state funding at stake.

Federal law requires that coalition to designate one lead agency to handle three specific jobs, and in Richmond's case, that's Homeward. As Collaborative Applicant, Homeward assembles and submits the region's single consolidated application, coordinates the twice-yearly Point-in-Time count, and conducts the annual gaps analysis that identifies where the system falls short. As Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) Lead, it operates the region's federally mandated data system, training and supporting the staff at partner agencies who track who's being served and what's working. As Coordinated Entry System Coordinator, it runs the process that connects people seeking help to whichever agency's program fits, and organizes the case conferencing sessions where staff across agencies work through harder cases together; the region logged 104 such sessions in the most recent full reporting year.

None of that work makes Homeward the provider. The shelter beds, rapid rehousing units and permanent supportive housing come from the 13 funded agencies and the dozens of other member organizations. Homeward's job is closer to a utility: the shared data system, the single point of federal contact, and the coordination that lets a 40-organization coalition function as one applicant instead of dozens of competing ones.

That coordination carries a real administrative cost. Every year, the coalition submits 30 performance reports to the state and 55 to HUD, each one carrying more than 1,000 individual data points. This is the kind of sustained compliance work no single small agency could absorb on its own.

Why One Application, Not Dozens

The single-application structure is key to our region's success in securing federal funds for homeless services. HUD's competition rules set what's called Tier 1 at 60 percent of a region's Annual Renewal Demand, a statutory floor written into this year's federal appropriations law. In practice, that means a fixed majority of Richmond's existing federal funding is protected from competition before the rest gets scored against every other region in the country. A single, well-coordinated application is what lets a mid-size region like Richmond compete for the remaining share against much larger metro areas, rather than losing ground project by project.

What $9.39 Million in Federal Funding Bought Last Cycle

In January 2025, the region secured $9.39 million in federal funding through this same competition, money Homeward estimated would support permanent housing for more than 1,500 regional residents. “This substantial increase in federal funding is a testament to the GRCoC's impact and the key role of regional collaboration,” said Kelly King Horne, Homeward's chief executive officer, at the time. Federal Continuum of Care funding covers about 30 percent of the roughly $30 million a year the coalition's coordinated programs cost to run, with the rest split between state funding, local government support and private fundraising.

Most of that federal share goes to permanent supportive housing, the model that keeps people with disabilities and long histories of homelessness stably housed long-term. Rapid rehousing, the model that moves people from homelessness into their own lease within months, served 918 people in the coalition's most recent reporting year, and 81 percent of them exited into a permanent home. A gap in funding doesn't just delay a grant; it interrupts rental assistance and services already keeping people housed.

Rent Rose Nearly 60% Since 2010. The Homeless Count Didn't Follow the Expected Path

Here's one reason this matters beyond the agencies directly involved. A 2020 Government Accountability Office report found that, nationally, a $100 increase in median rent is associated with roughly a 9 percent rise in a region's estimated homelessness rate. Richmond's average rent rose from $883 in 2010 to $1,411 in 2025, a jump of nearly 60 percent, well past that threshold. Applied linearly to a jump that size, the national pattern would predict a homeless count roughly 50 percent higher than where it started.

That's not what happened. The region's January count stood at 1,012 people in 2010. It fell steadily through the following decade, bottoming out at 497 in 2019, before spiking to 838 in 2021 as pandemic-era shelter and eviction protections shifted, then declining again over the next four years to 660 in January 2025, a decline of roughly 35 percent from where it started fifteen years earlier.

None of this proves the coalition's programs are the reason the count didn't track with rent the way the national pattern would predict. It isn't a controlled comparison, and the 2021 spike shows how much a single year's number can move for reasons that have nothing to do with rent. But one plausible read, consistent with what the coalition's prevention and rapid rehousing programs are built to do, is that coordinated intervention is catching a significant share of the people rising rent would otherwise push into a shelter bed or onto the street, before they show up in the count at all.

Where Things Stand

The region's application is due Wednesday. The lawsuit over the funding rules it's being submitted under is still active, and HUD's timeline requires a decision on awards by Dec. 1. Richmonders interested in following the outcome, or in the wider network of agencies the application represents, can find more at Homeward's partner page.

Disclosure: the author is a board member at Homeward, effective 2025.