Homeless Legislation: McKinney-Vento, Grants Pass, and VAWA Protections

Homeless legislation in the United States operates on three levels: federal statutes that define who counts as homeless and fund housing and services, civil rights protections covering education, housing stability, and voting, and a patchwork of state and local laws that govern everything from inclusionary zoning to enforcement of public camping bans. The most consequential recent change came in June 2024, when the Supreme Court ruled that cities can enforce public camping ordinances without running afoul of the Eighth Amendment, removing a constitutional limit that had constrained enforcement across nine western states.

Who the Law Considers Homeless

Eligibility for federal housing and service programs hinges on the definition in 42 U.S.C. § 11302. It reaches well beyond people sleeping on sidewalks and covers six categories:¹

People with no fixed, regular nighttime residence.
People whose primary sleeping place is a car, park, bus station, abandoned building, or other place not meant for habitation.
People living in emergency shelters, transitional housing, or hotels and motels paid for by government or charitable programs.
People exiting a hospital, jail, or similar institution who were homeless before entering.
People who will lose their housing within 14 days, have no identified next residence, and lack the resources to find one.
Unaccompanied youth and families with children who have experienced prolonged instability and face barriers like chronic health conditions, substance use, or domestic violence.

That final category was added by the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act in 2009, broadening the original McKinney-Vento definition to include people whose housing situations are precarious but not literally on the street.² The statute also separately addresses people fleeing domestic violence.¹ If a person’s situation fits any of these categories, they qualify for programs whose eligibility is keyed to the federal definition.

The McKinney-Vento Act and Federal Homelessness Funding

Congress passed the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act in 1987 as the first comprehensive federal legislation dedicated to homelessness.³ It created the funding framework for emergency shelter, transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, and supportive services.⁴ The HEARTH Act of 2009 consolidated several overlapping HUD grant programs into two main channels.²

Continuum of Care

The Continuum of Care (CoC) program is HUD’s main competitive grant. Local governments, nonprofits, and service providers within a geographic area form a collaborative body that develops a unified plan and submits a single application to HUD each year.⁵ CoC grants pay for constructing or rehabilitating housing, leasing units, tenant-based and project-based rental assistance, operating costs for supportive housing, and services like case management and job training.⁶

Emergency Solutions Grants

Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG) target the front end of homelessness. Unlike CoC funds, ESG dollars flow by formula to states, cities, and counties.⁷ ESG-funded prevention can include short- and medium-term rental assistance, security deposits, utility payments, housing search help, mediation, and legal services for households at immediate risk of losing their home. Rapid re-housing money helps people already in shelters or on the street move quickly into permanent housing, and street outreach funding supports caseworkers who engage unsheltered individuals directly.

Public Camping, the Eighth Amendment, and Grants Pass

For years the central legal question was whether cities could punish people for sleeping outside when no shelter was available. In 2018, the Ninth Circuit ruled in Martin v. City of Boise that criminal penalties for sleeping outdoors when no shelter beds were available violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, reasoning that punishing an involuntary act amounted to punishing the status of being homeless.⁸ Cities across nine western states began tracking shelter capacity before enforcing anti-camping ordinances, and many switched to civil citations or designated camping areas.

The Supreme Court upended that framework in June 2024. In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, a 6-3 majority held that enforcing generally applicable public camping laws does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment. The Court reasoned that the Eighth Amendment governs the method of punishment imposed after conviction, not whether the government can criminalize the conduct in the first place. The majority stressed that camping bans apply equally to everyone, “regardless of whether the charged defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation, or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest.”⁹

The ruling does not require cities to criminalize camping. It removes the constitutional floor Martin had set. In the year after the decision, cities across the country introduced hundreds of new ordinances targeting public camping, sleeping in vehicles, and related activities. Places that had pulled back on enforcement resumed citations and arrests. If you are unsheltered, whether you can be cited or arrested for sleeping in a public place now depends almost entirely on local law rather than a federal constitutional limit.

Education Rights for Children Without Stable Housing

The education subtitle of the McKinney-Vento Act contains some of the strongest individual protections in federal homelessness law, and they are underused because many families do not know about them. A child or youth experiencing homelessness has the right to enroll in school immediately, without the paperwork schools usually demand: immunization records, proof of residency, previous transcripts, or a birth certificate.¹⁰ The enrolling school must contact the previous school for records and connect the family with any needed immunizations or health screenings.

Homeless students also have the right to stay in their “school of origin,” the school they attended before losing stable housing, for as long as the homelessness continues and through the end of the academic year if they find permanent housing mid-year.¹⁰ The district must provide free transportation to that school when a parent or guardian requests it. Every district has to designate a homeless education liaison responsible for identifying homeless students, connecting families with services, and making sure these rights are honored. These protections apply whether the child is in a shelter, in a car, doubled up with relatives, or in any other situation that meets the federal definition. Ask for the liaison by name at enrollment; that is where the process most often breaks down.

VAWA Housing Protections for Survivors

Domestic violence is one of the leading drivers of homelessness. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), most recently reauthorized in 2022, includes housing protections for tenants and applicants in HUD-assisted programs, including public housing, Housing Choice Vouchers, and Continuum of Care projects.

Under VAWA, survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, or stalking cannot be evicted or denied housing assistance based on incidents of violence committed against them. Housing providers can bifurcate a lease to remove a perpetrator while allowing the survivor and other household members to remain. If the removed person was the only tenant eligible for the program, the remaining household gets a reasonable period to establish their own eligibility or find new housing. Survivors facing imminent danger can request an emergency transfer to a different unit, and CoC grant funds can be used to facilitate transfers. The 2022 reauthorization added anti-retaliation provisions barring housing providers from penalizing anyone for exercising VAWA rights, requesting police help, or encouraging others to do the same.¹¹

Eviction Prevention After the Pandemic Programs Ended

An eviction filing on a person’s record, even one that does not result in removal, can make future housing far harder to secure. During the pandemic, the federal Emergency Rental Assistance program covered rent, arrears, utilities, and housing stability services for eligible households. Those funds are gone. ERA2’s performance period ended on September 30, 2025.¹²

With federal emergency funding expired, eviction prevention now depends on state and local legislation. A growing number of jurisdictions have enacted right-to-counsel laws guaranteeing legal representation for tenants facing eviction. When tenants have lawyers, courts are more likely to consider habitability defenses and to negotiate outcomes that keep people housed rather than processing default judgments. If you are facing an eviction filing, check whether your city or state has a tenant right-to-counsel program and how to access it before your first court date.

Voting and Access to Identification

People experiencing homelessness keep the right to vote. Federal voter registration allows a person without a traditional address to register using a shelter address or a description of where they sleep, such as a park name or the intersection of two streets. A shelter, religious center, or other community location can serve as a mailing address for election materials.¹³

Getting a state ID is another barrier that legislation increasingly addresses. ID is a prerequisite for jobs, housing, and benefits, but replacing a lost one usually requires documents and fees that people without stable housing cannot easily produce. A number of states have passed laws waiving or reducing ID card fees for people experiencing homelessness and accepting alternative documentation, such as a letter from a shelter director or social service provider, in place of standard proof of residency. Similar fee-waiver statutes exist for vital records like birth certificates, which are often needed to obtain the ID itself. These laws typically require an affidavit from a homeless services provider confirming the person’s status.

State and Local Affordable Housing Laws

State and local governments use land-use policy to increase the supply of affordable and supportive housing. Inclusionary zoning requires developers of new residential projects to set aside a percentage of units for lower-income residents. The specifics vary: some jurisdictions apply it to all new developments above a size threshold; others limit it to projects receiving public subsidies or zoning changes. In many places, developers can pay a fee into an affordable housing fund instead of building the units on-site.

Density bonuses work as a trade. Local governments let developers build more units than zoning would normally allow in exchange for including affordable housing in the project. The extra market-rate units offset the lower revenue from below-market rentals, keeping the project financially viable.

Several state legislatures have passed laws to override local resistance to affordable and supportive housing. These laws typically streamline the permitting process for certain housing types or classify supportive housing as a “by-right” use that local zoning boards cannot block through discretionary review. The effect is to shift decision-making power from neighborhood-level opposition to state mandates.

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 11302 – General Definition of Homeless Individual
2
HUD Exchange. Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 11301 – Findings and Purpose
4
Congress.gov. Public Law 100-77 – Stewart B. McKinney Homeless Assistance Act
5
HUD Exchange. Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act – Section: Continuum of Care Program
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 11383 – Eligible Activities
7
HUD Exchange. Emergency Solutions Grants Program Fact Sheet
8
Justia. Martin v. City of Boise, No. 15-35845 (9th Cir. 2018)
9
Supreme Court of the United States. City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, 603 U.S. ___ (2024)
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 42 USC 11432 – Grants for State and Local Activities for the Education of Homeless Children and Youths
11
Federal Register. The Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022 Overview of Applicability to HUD Programs
12
U.S. Department of the Treasury. Emergency Rental Assistance Program
13
Vote.gov. Voting While Unhoused