Please see below for all email updates sent in May 2025. Feel free to reach out to Katie at kmeyerscott at homelesslaw.org with any questions or to be added to the email list!

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6/17/2025

Hello again!

Registration for “Labor Law & Contracting for Youth and Young Adults: Breaking Down Barriers to Equitable Compensation” on Weds. 6/25 from 1-2:30 PM ET is live: https://nn4youth-org.zoom.us/webinar/register/9517500921650/WN_JpigBP10QJKwk5yw3g3KkA#/registration. The presentation portion of the webinar will be recorded and that plus materials will be sent to anyone who registers, so feel free to register even if you can’t attend live.

And I am pleased to announce that we are seeking nominations of state and local legislators for our Human Right to Housing Awards to be held in Nov. 2025. This year, we are seeking nominations of legislators who are champions for unhoused youth. Nominations are due by July 16, 2025 and can be made by filling out a short nomination form. Feel free to circulate the nomination form link far and wide!

Ok, now onto the bad stuff:

A lot of people are asking me about threats to nonprofits by this administration generally, and to homelessness service providers in particular, and whether there are any plans, ideas, or strategies to mitigate these. Here is the current list of potential threats I am thinking about with some ideas for how to deal with them (with the caveat that these ideas are my opinions and any risk assessment and planning is best done in consultation with an attorney barred in your jurisdiction, who can assess the needs of your specific organization or situation):

1. Threat: Someone from the admin publicly calls out a specific org or our sector, resulting in negative media or social media attention, which translates into real life threats, doxing, or other actions that put staff or clients in harms way or hampers our ability to effectively provide services. Strategy Ideas: Take steps to minimize and protect Personal Identifying Information (PII) online (as much as it pains me to share something from this agency, this 2024 guidance from DHS about doxing is both succinct and thorough). Develop a communications plan now, based on how you are likely to be targeted (serving immigrants, engaging in racial equity work, etc.). Make sure everyone knows what to do and what to say if you are targeted.
2. Threat: Funding is rescinded based on not complying with the executive orders/grant agreement terms. Strategy Ideas: Develop a plan now that covers readiness to mount a legal challenge to the recission, potential financial mitigation (reserves, line of credit, emergency funding, etc.), and internal and external comms. Ideally, this would be done collectively (maybe at the CoC level or with multiple orgs to share cost, etc.)
3. Threat: You receive a letter from Congress or a government agency telling you to preserve documents or respond to a survey about your organizational activities. Strategy Ideas: Read this primer on congressional oversight and this deeper dive on what to do if this happens. I am going to ask around to see if there are any resources that are a little more targeted to our sector (rather than say, a company with access to their own legal team and outside counsel).
4. Threat:  The President issues an EO targeting nonprofits and directing federal agencies to audit (including by embedding DOGE employees), seize assets, revoke the 501(c)(3) status, investigate or refer for criminal investigation. Strategy Ideas: Check out this resource doc that ACLU, Public Citizen, State Democracy Defenders Fund, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and Americans Against Government Censorship put together to address the potential nonprofit EO.

If there are other threats you are aware of, please let me know! Or if you have helpful resources around these issues, please share them with me and I will make sure to circulate them in the next update.

-Katie

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6/6/2025

Hi all,

You may have heard about the abrupt termination of the Job Corps program last week and I wanted to share that a nationwide TRO has been granted in the Job Corps case, which means that all Job Corp programs need to immediately stop terminating youth from the program and re-enroll those they have already terminated.

The TRO is attached, along with a cease and desist letter from the Law Center that can be sent to any Job Corps center informing them of their legal responsibilities.

This article has some great talking points about Job Corps and how many youth will be affected (and approximately how many are at risk of returning to homelessness if the program ends): https://njcaweb.org/concern-for-displaced-students-as-job-corps-campuses-ordered-to-shut-down

A lot of the programs have told youth they have to leave by today so we are trying to spread the info about the TRO as far and wide as possible! Please feel free to forward this email to anyone who might find it useful.  And if you are or know any young person terminated from the program (or being told they are going to be terminated), please have them fill out this form: https://form.jotform.com/251553814608055 and/or put them in touch with me!

Thanks all,

Katie

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6/2/2025

Hi all,

First, just a quick note to say we will NOT be holding Office Hours this week. The next Office Hours will be June 17^th from 3:30-5:00 PM. A registration link will be circulated a few days before. Please do reach out if you have any urgent questions or need for legal referrals, though.

Next, I wanted to give you all a sneak peek at some supplementary guidance to go along with the FY2024 CoC Grant Agreement changes analysis (if you don’t have a link to this, let me know). It provides some more information about the legal issues raised by the changes and some guidance about how to navigate these changes in your program operations in a way that protects the people you serve. I hope it is clear in the document but this is not legal advice – each organization will have to decide how this guidance does or does not apply to their programs, ideally with the help of local legal counsel, and in consultation with your partners, clients, and lived experience leadership. But I would love to know if this covers your questions or concerns or if it is missing anything top of mind for you:

Please forgive any typos or formatting issues – it still needs a final proofread (in addition to any edits suggested by you all). And please do not share this link or password without reaching out to me first!

I also wanted to ask that any person on this email list who may have a pending NCC grant application for RHYA funding (BCP, TLP, SOP or MGH), to please reach out to me if you’d like to be invited to an informational webinar about FYSB requested revisions to those grant agreements. If you aren’t familiar with these acronyms, just ignore! I will share more widely applicable info about this issue soon.

I also wanted to ask if anyone on this list is a member of or coordinator of a youth action board (or similar) to reach out if you’d like to be included in some coalition work we are starting.

Thanks all – sending you lots of energy for the week ahead.

-Katie