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Effective Date:Nov 3, 2026
HUD has formally waived a procedural notice requirement for its reopened fiscal 2026 Continuum of Care competition, telling the public in a Federal Register notice published November 3 that the department is racing a court-disrupted timeline to make the program's awards by a congressionally mandated December 1 deadline.
The notice, signed by Deputy Secretary Andrew Hughes, waives the minimum 30-day application period required under Section 102(a) of the HUD Reform Act for the FY2026 CoC notice of funding opportunity, which HUD reopened on September 18 with a September 30 deadline, a window of just 12 days.
HUD said it does not believe the waiver was legally required, because applicants had nearly four months in total to review the NOFO, but issued it out of an abundance of caution given the litigation that vacated and then restored the competition this summer and fall.
The FY2026 CoC NOFO has been published, vacated by a federal court, and restored on appeal over the past five months, a sequence the notice lays out in unusual detail.
HUD first published the NOFO on June 1, 2026, with an August 26 application deadline, giving applicants 87 days to prepare submissions. On July 24, the department published a modified NOFO that kept the same deadline and, apart from adding a mechanism for direct-to-HUD funding for areas with no collaborative applicant, made no substantive changes.
In early July, two groups of plaintiffs sued in the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island to challenge the NOFO: a coalition of states led by Washington, and the National Alliance to End Homelessness. On August 7, the district court vacated the FY2026 NOFO entirely, rendering it null and void less than 20 days before the original deadline.
HUD appealed. While the appeal proceeded, the department kept a copy of the NOFO on its website and notified applicants by listserv. On September 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit stayed the district court's judgment while the challenge continues, which automatically restored the NOFO.
Two days later, on September 18, HUD reopened the competition with a funding application deadline of 8:00 p.m. Eastern on September 30, creating the 12-day window that the new waiver covers.
Section 102(a) of the HUD Reform Act requires the department to publish selection criteria at least 30 days before an application deadline. The Secretary may waive the requirement when a waiver is needed for an appropriate response to an emergency, but must publish the reasons in the Federal Register within 30 days, which is what the November 3 notice does.
HUD's position is that no emergency waiver was technically necessary. The department notes the reopened window was short, but argues it formed part of a larger application period of about 80 days, because applicants had the NOFO in hand from June 1 through the August 7 vacatur and could keep working from the copy HUD maintained online during the appeal.
Even so, the notice says, the Secretary determined it was prudent to issue the waiver, citing exigent and emergency circumstances: the statutory December 1 award deadline and the need to keep funding flowing to successful projects.
The notice discloses the scale of what HUD now has to process. The department received close to 8,000 individual project applications, including about 3,500 new project applications, along with almost 400 CoC applications from the local planning bodies that coordinate homeless services in their areas.
HUD says it must now review all of those applications and make awards within 62 days, which would be the fastest the program has ever processed a competition. Historically, application reviews have required more than 90 days.
That math is why the department says it could not lengthen the reopened application window any further. The original August 26 deadline was set to build in the review time HUD expected to need; the district court's vacatur eliminated part of that runway, and the First Circuit's stay restarted the clock with the December 1 mandate unchanged.
Congress requires HUD to make awards under the FY2026 CoC NOFO by December 1, 2026. The department says meeting that date matters beyond statutory compliance: timely awards ensure ongoing funding for successful and meritorious projects, and for projects that continuums or Congress may lawfully protect from competition.
The Continuum of Care program is HUD's largest homelessness assistance vehicle, funding permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, transitional housing, and services through local continuums of care. A delayed competition would ripple through renewals for thousands of existing projects that house formerly homeless households.
The First Circuit's stay did not end the challenge to the NOFO. It paused the district court's judgment while the plaintiffs' cases proceed, meaning the underlying lawsuits, brought by the state coalition and the National Alliance to End Homelessness, remain active.
The plaintiffs challenged the NOFO's revised approach to the competition. HUD's modified NOFO had drawn scrutiny for changes to how the department structures awards, including the new mechanism allowing direct-to-HUD funding applications in areas where no collaborative applicant exists.
For now, the competition is moving. Applications closed September 30, review is underway, and the waiver notice closes the procedural loop on the short reopening window.
The Continuum of Care program is HUD's primary vehicle for funding local homeless response systems. It flows money to continuums of care, the regional or local planning bodies that coordinate housing and services for people experiencing homelessness, and those continuums in turn fund individual projects such as permanent supportive housing, rapid rehousing, and transitional housing.
Each year, HUD runs a national competition in which continuums rank and submit project applications for funding. Most of the money in a typical competition goes to renew existing projects that are already housing people, while a smaller share funds new projects. That structure is why the notice emphasizes timely awards: a delayed competition does not just slow new ideas, it threatens the continuity of existing housing placements.
The FY2026 competition drew close to 8,000 project applications in total, about 3,500 of them for new projects, plus nearly 400 applications from continuums themselves. The volume underscores how much of the nation's homeless services infrastructure rides on this single annual process.
The HUD Reform Act, passed in 1989, imposed procedural disciplines on how the department runs competitions for assistance. Section 102(a)(3) requires HUD to publish the selection criteria for a funding competition at least 30 days before applications are due, so applicants have meaningful notice of the rules they will be judged under.
The statute allows the Secretary to waive that requirement when a waiver is required for an appropriate response to an emergency, but it adds a transparency condition: HUD must publish the Secretary's reasons in the Federal Register within 30 days. The November 3 notice, signed by Deputy Secretary Andrew Hughes and running two pages at 91 FR 69267, is that publication.
Notably, HUD says it does not believe it was legally required to seek the waiver at all. The department's reading is that the 12-day September reopening was not a standalone application period but part of a larger, roughly 80-day period that began with the NOFO's original June 1 publication. Because applicants had the document for months, HUD argues, the 30-day policy behind the statute was satisfied even if the literal calendar of the reopened window was not.
The waiver was issued anyway, the notice says, out of an abundance of caution, a signal that HUD wants to insulate the eventual awards from procedural challenges while the substantive lawsuits against the NOFO continue.
One substantive feature of the modified NOFO survives alongside the procedural fight. The July 24 modification added a mechanism, laid out in Appendix III of the NOFO, for direct-to-HUD funding in areas with no collaborative applicant.
In most places, a single collaborative applicant submits the continuum's consolidated application. Where no such body exists or functions, projects have historically been shut out of the competition. The new mechanism gives projects in those areas a path to apply to HUD directly. The notice does not say how many applications arrived through that channel, but it is part of the competition now under review.
Reading the waiver alongside the litigation timeline, the notice functions as more than a procedural formality. It is HUD's public accounting of why the competition looks the way it does, and a preview of the department's defense if the compressed schedule draws further legal challenges.
The department is making two bets at once. First, that the First Circuit's stay holds long enough for awards to go out on schedule. Second, that documenting the emergency rationale now, within the statute's 30-day publication window, closes off a line of attack on the awards themselves.
For continuums and project sponsors, the practical message is simpler: the competition is real, the deadline has passed, and awards are coming by December 1 if HUD meets its mandate. Agencies with renewal projects should be preparing for award notifications and the contracting process on a compressed timeline, and new applicants should be ready to move quickly if selected.
The immediate marker is December 1. If HUD meets the statutory deadline, it will have completed the fastest CoC competition in the program's history; if it slips, thousands of renewal projects could face funding gaps.
Beyond that, the First Circuit's eventual ruling on the merits of the challenge could shape how HUD structures future CoC competitions, and whether the changes plaintiffs sued over survive into fiscal 2027.
HUD published a Federal Register notice on November 3 waiving the 30-day application notice requirement for the reopened FY2026 Continuum of Care competition, which ran for 12 days from September 18 to September 30.
The competition was vacated by a Rhode Island federal district court on August 7 after lawsuits by a state coalition and the National Alliance to End Homelessness, then restored when the First Circuit stayed the ruling on September 16.
HUD says it received close to 8,000 project applications, including about 3,500 new projects, and nearly 400 CoC applications, and must process them within 62 days, the fastest review in the program's history.
Congress requires HUD to make FY2026 CoC awards by December 1, 2026, which the department cited as the emergency justifying the waiver.
The underlying lawsuits are still active, so the First Circuit's eventual decision could shape future CoC competitions even as this year's awards proceed.
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