New Federal Homelessness Contracts Appear Designed to Exclude Undocumented Immigrants

The new contract language also says the region's homelessness agency can't fund nonprofits that practice "gender ideology."

By Erica C. Barnett

New federal contracts for homeless services include a requirement that providers deny benefits to undocumented immigrants, King County Regional Homelessness Authority deputy CEO Simon Foster told the King County Council this week. Foster warned that the new restrictions, which have not appeared in previous federal contracts, could result in people losing services they already access and avoiding homeless providers for fear of deportation.

"We know that citizenship verification requirements have a chilling effect that extends throughout the community, and even documented individuals are less likely to seek help if they are afraid of the repercussions to themselves, their friends and their family," Foster said.

The new language showed up in the KCRHA's first 2025 grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Continuum of Care program, which provides about 11 percent of KCRHA's funding. In keeping with new, Trump-era boilerplate for other federal grants, the new language also says agencies must certify that they won't use the funding in ways that "promote 'gender ideology'" or violate several new executive orders, including one denying federal funds to "sanctuary cities." A judge temporarily blocked the sanctuary city order on Thursday.

Under the terms of the contract, KCRHA would be required to "administer its grant in accordance with all applicable immigration restrictions and requirements, including the eligibility and verification requirements" from the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, better known as welfare reform. That law prohibits undocumented immigrants from receiving federally funded services, with some exceptions whose interpretation is entirely up to the "unreviewable" discretion of the attorney general, according to the law.

In 2016, then-attorney general Loretta Lynch issued guidance affirming that homeless service providers could spend federal funding on programs that provide shelter, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, and outreach to undocumented immigrants. Under Trump, that guidance has been removed from HUD's website.

The new rules also say that KCRHA, or the nonprofit agencies that provide services and housing (the language is ambiguous), has to check the immigration status of every person seeking housing, shelter, or services in a massive federal database called Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system, or SAVE. According to the contract language, KCRHA "must use SAVE, or an equivalent verification system approved by the Federal government, to prevent any Federal public benefit from being provided to an ineligible alien who entered the United States illegally or is otherwise unlawfully present in the United States."

KCRHA is currently considering its legal options, which could include suing the federal government. Earlier this month, the agency's governing board held a lengthy, unscheduled executive session to discuss "federal funding impacts," going into closed session under an exemption to the open meetings act that allows private conversations about litigation or potential litigation.

The agency, unlike the city or county governments, has a legal department of one—general counsel Edmund Witter. Although suing (or joining a larger lawsuit) creates legal risks, so would signing the grant agreement. If the KCRHA agreed to exclude undocumented immigrants from services and avoid funding "gender ideology," it could open the agency up to legal liability from activist lawsuits. It's easy to see, for instance, how providing shelter where queer and trans people feel safe would count as "gender ideology" under the new Trump administration's rule.

Alison Eisinger, director of the Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness, said SKCCH fully expects "to see attempts to insert irrelevant and odious requirements and restrictions on federal funds that keep people housed in our community" coming from the federal government.

"We have to make sure we can keep people safe, housed, sheltered, and helped regardless of where they were born, who is in their household, and how they pay their rent," Eisinger said. "Local government and any philanthropic partners who concern themselves with housing and homelessness should be creating robust reserves to ensure that we are not at the mercy of the billionaire sociopaths."

It's unclear whether any of this is feasible, in a practical sense. Searching SAVE to see if someone is in the country legally is expensive (the government charges for each search), and neither KCRHA nor nonprofit service providers currently have access to the database. Most service providers won't want to be in charge of asking for people's virtual papers as a condition of providing services, and the possibility of mixups—between people with the same name, for instance—raises major due process issues, according to a person familiar with the legal issues.

Seattle City Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck, a former director of subregional planning and equitable engagement at KCRHA, said immigrants, particularly new arrivals, were already apprehensive about accessing the homelessness system before Trump's election, because of the fear of deportation and the stigma of being homeless.

"It’s a much more invisibilized homelessness experience," Rinck said. "People naturally feel anxious about accessing any type of government services already," she said, without having to prove their eligibility for a place to sleep at night. "I think the broad idea is that they're just going to use any measure to prevent immigrants from tapping into any program or services."

PubliCola has reached out to HUD's regional office, as well as several organizations that could be impacted if the new restrictions go into effect, and will post an update if we hear back.