Introduction
A New Process for Competitive Grants

HUD awards more than $2.4 billion each year through national competitions directly to local and State governments, non-profit and faith-based organizations, veterans service organizations, public housing agencies, Indian tribes and others to carry out a variety of HUD community and economic development programs. We have been told by community groups and others that to effectively use HUD resources to support coordinated neighborhood and community strategies, we must make these programs easier to access, easier to understand and easier to coordinate. In 1998, as part of Secretary Cuomo's HUD Management Reform designed to improve the way HUD interacts with our customers, we modified our competitive grant funding process.

Our competitive programs are now organized to mirror how a community thinks, rather than how HUD is organized. In the past, each of HUD's competitive programs had its own Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) released at various times throughout the year. Each NOFA was published in the Federal Register and outlined the timelines, rules, application requirements, criteria used to evaluate applications, and all other information pertinent to the competitive process. This fragmentation hindered communities' efforts to plan holistically and fund coordinated, interconnected strategies.

We no longer issue separate Notices of Funding Availability (NOFAs) for the majority of our grant programs. Instead, the competitive grant programs are announced in one SuperNOFA.¹ The SuperNOFA provides grant applicants with a complete menu of HUD competitive funding available in a given year to address pressing community needs and opportunities. This year, we have improved this even further by announcing the availability of three Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher programs in the SuperNOFA. The inclusion of these programs in the SuperNOFA will assist communities and developers of affordable housing in using these resources to support other funding opportunities available through the SuperNOFA.

The SuperNOFA approach also standardizes the application and selection processes. This makes our expectations clearer to, and the funding process easier for, applicants. For example, if you want to apply for two or more programs that fall within a specific group of programs designed to address similar issues, you will no longer be required to duplicate certain information that is required for each program. By implementing the SuperNOFA approach, we hope you will be better able to design comprehensive, coordinated strategies that effectively address the complex problems facing your communities. In turn, HUD pledges to continue to move from an organization of separate program offices with isolated programs to one HUD with one mission—empowering people to develop viable urban communities that provide a suitable living environment for all citizens.

Attaining this mission requires us to meet several goals laid out in our Strategic Plan. In awarding funding under this SuperNOFA, HUD will be guided by these goals, which are to:

• Empower communities to meet local needs.
  
  
• Help communities and States establish a full continuum of housing and services designed to assist homeless individuals and families in achieving permanent housing and self-sufficiency.
  
  
• Increase availability of affordable housing in standard condition to families and individuals, particularly the Nation's poor and disadvantaged.
  
  
• Reduce the isolation of low-income groups within a community or geographical area.
  
  
• Provide empowerment and self-sufficiency opportunities for low-income individuals and families, particularly the Nation's poor and disadvantaged.
  
  
• Increase homeownership opportunities through a variety of tools, such as expanding access to mortgage credit.
  
  
• Promote equal housing opportunities for those protected by law.

This User's Guide to HUD Programs and the 2000 SuperNOFA will help you understand HUD's grant processes and provide you with a menu of funding options available. Many of you have been long-time users of HUD funding and have become quite familiar with the "in's and out's" of the one or two programs that you regularly access. While the move to SuperNOFA will not change the specific statutory and regulatory requirements of HUD's competitive programs, it will cause some changes to our notification, application, and selection processes. The User's Guide will help you understand those changes. It will also expose you to additional HUD programs that you can access and coordinate with the programs that you typically use. The overall goal of this User's Guide is to help you create truly comprehensive, coordinated, and effective strategies to address your community needs.

¹HUD reserves the right to issue separate NOFAs for individual programs, such as demonstrations or those still in development as of the SuperNOFA release date, as warranted.