I have an eps logotype file Im working with in Houdini. The “O” in the eps has 2 path shapes and when I bring it into Houdini, the middle path shows as a solid. It makes sense to me that that is how Houdini reads an eps, but how would I go about knocking out the middle shape into the larger “O” shape? Maybe the answer is totally different but the minus front tool in Illustrator is an example of the result I'm trying to emulate

The Hole SOP should hopefully do what you're looking for. Just connect the output of the SOP producing the current geometry to the input of a Hole SOP.

Hole SOP can be terribly slow for complex shapes
alternatively you can use Boolean SOP to do the same