Judge Rules to Free Unused Federal Building Space for Nonprofits Serving the Homeless

In Judge: Agencies have been‘hiding’ federal properties that could be used to house services for homeless,the Washington Post reports that Judge Royce Lamberth of the United StatesDistrict Court for the District of Columbia recently found that the federalgovernment has been underreporting the number of unused federal properties potentiallyavailable to groups serving the homeless, in violation of a federal law. Saysthe Post,

The ruling orders the GeneralServices Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development totake additional steps to ensure agencies are following the law, includingcreating new training programs. …

The law in question is Title V of the McKinney-Vento Act, whichrequires federal agencies to list unused, surplus or underutilized propertiesin the Federal Register, and reach out to homeless services providers —nonprofits and state and local governments — that can apply to lease theproperties at no charge. Under the law, providers are to get a 60-day periodwhere they get right of first refusal to those properties. This is importantbecause one of the greatest costs to running homeless services is real estate,and the law is meant to allow nonprofits to gain access to buildings they maynot be able to afford on the open market.

The story further explains that the litigation producing Judge Lamberth’s rulingbegan in 1988, when the National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty and othernonprofits sued several federal agencies. A 1993 permanent injunction ordered the government to implement the relevantlaw and preserved the plaintiffs’ right “to bring the issue before a court againfor enforcement if agencies were not complying with the law.”

For an overview of the Title V program, see here.

JRB