Sponsors (8)
The bill lowers enrollment barriers and increases transparency and local alignment for homelessness assistance, but it raises privacy risks and administrative burdens and limits HUD's ability to deploy nationwide incentives, shifting costs and trade-offs to local providers and vulnerable people.
Homeless individuals and families recognized as homeless under other federal programs will be eligible for HUD programs without additional verification, reducing administrative barriers to accessing housing and services.
Local communities, policymakers, and service providers will receive annually published HMIS data (counts and service-pattern information), improving transparency and enabling better targeting of resources and planning.
Local governments and service providers that align proposals with local plans and demonstrate cost-effectiveness are more likely to score better for grants, steering funds toward locally identified priorities and proven strategies.
Homeless individuals and families could face increased privacy risks if annually published HMIS data are not sufficiently de-identified or aggregated, potentially exposing sensitive personal information.
Local governments and service providers may incur greater verification and documentation burdens when HUD accepts other federal program determinations, creating administrative strain and potential inconsistencies across programs.
Prohibiting HUD from creating national bonuses or model-priority incentives could reduce the agency's flexibility to promote nationwide best practices or rapidly scale successful models across jurisdictions.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Clarifies McKinney‑Vento definitions, recognizes other federal homelessness verifications, and requires HUD to grant equal eligibility and equal scoring priority for covered children and youth.
Introduced December 3, 2025 by Michael Lawler · Last progress December 3, 2025
Amends the McKinney‑Vento Homeless Assistance Act to clarify and tighten definitions of who counts as a homeless child or youth, to recognize homelessness determinations made by other federal programs without requiring HUD re‑verification, and to require HUD to treat all eligible children and youth the same when issuing rules, guidance, or scoring grant applications. The changes are technical and administrative: they adjust language, delete an outdated paragraph, add cross‑references for defined terms, and direct HUD to ensure equal eligibility and equal priority/points/weight across program components for covered individuals. The bill does not create new programs or appropriate money; it focuses on definitional clarity and on ensuring parity for children and youth already verified as homeless by other federal programs so they can access HUD programs and competitive components on an equal basis.