On Monday, June 1, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, better known as HUD, released its Notice of Funding Opportunity Continuum of Care Competition for Fiscal Year 2026.
Brown County is part of the Balance of State CoC, the Continuum of Care that makes up the majority of the state outside of Milwaukee, Dane and Racine counties, which have their own CoCs. A Continuum of Care is a regional nonprofit or government entity that helps coordinate and distribute funding to homeless and housing providers.
Homelessness fell 3.1% nationwide based on the January 2025 Point in Time count, according to the 2025 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (Part 1). This trend is seen locally: In Brown County there was an 8% decrease in homelessness from 453 in 2025 to 416 in 2026 on the night of the Point in Time count.
More people than ever before are receiving housing services nationally: 642,451, an increase of 4%, according to the annual report. However, over the course of 2024, 912,807 people entered homelessness for the first time.
Service providers are tasked to meet the needs of an increasingly vulnerable population, including the chronically homeless. Chronic homelessness is defined as an individual with a disability who has been continuously homeless for one year or more or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the last three years where the combined length of time spent homeless on those occasions is at least 12 months. In particular, chronic homelessness continues to be a challenge for CoCs with funding for Permanent Supportive Housing. Organizations nationwide have Permanent Supportive Housing beds available for, at most, 32% of the chronically homeless population, according to the AHAR report. In Brown County nearly 19% of our homeless population meets the chronically homeless designation and 69% have a disability.
HUD has designated $4.04 billion in funding for CoCs to apply for in fiscal year 2026, more than previous HUD notices. However, this notice redirects CoC programming away from Permanent Supportive Housing and toward Transitional Housing programming, with addiction and mental health treatment as an objective for housing services.
In the notice, HUD tells us that “Housing First” programming has failed, pointing to the 27% increase in homelessness since 2013 when “Housing First” was introduced. In that time, funding for “permanent beds” has increased 150.9% and CoC funding has increased 111%.
From 2013 to 2026 rental costs in Wisconsin have increased nearly 78%, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Zillow, with spikes in post-COVID rental markets in midsize Wisconsin cities such as Green Bay and Appleton being hit the hardest.
The minimum wage has not changed in the state of Wisconsin since 2009, and according to data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition this leaves rental options out of reach for many in the state of Wisconsin. In Brown County, an estimated 35% of the population, or 39,000 people, are renters, coalition data shows. This means a minimum wage worker in Brown County needs to work 104 hours a week to afford a modest one-bedroom rental.
With direction from the HUD notice, CoCs will need to meet a new set of requirements that are beyond the scope of nonprofit service providers in our community. This includes increasing the wages of program participants and required mental health and addiction treatment. This is not something that can be done at a CoC level alone. Brown County service providers are working diligently to meet the needs of those in our community who are experiencing homelessness by offering opportunities for permanent housing, transitional housing and emergency shelter. They are not built to respond to a stagnant minimum wage, a housing market devoid of options and a mental health epidemic.
The current CoC project is not perfect, but it does not exist in a perfect environment. For Permanent Supportive Housing programs with full funding to succeed, we need to create that. The HUD notice puts the responsibility of making the perfect environment and running the perfect program on the regional housing coalitions, and if you are unable to meet that, too bad.
Housing is the responsibility of our community and the people who live here. This “pay-to-play” model is harmful to our CoCs, community nonprofits and especially harmful to the neighbors they serve.
We don’t fix our current homelessness crisis by punishing the helpers.
We fix the problem by addressing the root causes:
- State and local governments can work to support increased development by repealing restrictive zoning rules.
- Grants and low interest loans should be used to support development to ensure there are units available for those at 30-80% Area Median Income. In Brown County we are already doing this; many zoning changes across the community are starting to happen.
- We need collaboration across municipalities to keep up with the demand and meet the changing needs of households in our community.
- We need grants to help landlords and property managers make necessary repairs to our aging housing stock to keep it up to code and available for program participants.
- We need to protect our “mom and pop” landlords from consumer act lawsuits, while increasing tenants’ rights: right to council during evictions, right to organize and the right to purchase.
And this is just the start. We need to increase access points for mental health and addiction treatment by expanding public health care; treating these not as the cause of homelessness but as a health crisis.
It’s not an easy pill to swallow, and addressing the root causes will require hard work and time. But we live in a community that cares and has the resources to make an impact by working together and helping our neighbors.
Josh Benti is the homeless initiative project director for the Greater Green Bay Blueprint to Prevent and End Homelessness, an initiative of the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation that creates pathways to prevent and end homelessness in the region.
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