HUD AWARDS $1.4 MILLION TO LOS ANGELES TO IMPROVE HOUSING AND SERVICES FOR THOSE LIVING WITH AIDS
Grants provided by HUD's Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) Program

WASHINGTON - Today, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded $1.4 million to the Los Angeles County Commission on HIV in Los Angeles, California as part of a national effort to offer permanent and transitional housing and support services to more than 200 households with families and individuals living with HIV/AIDS. Provided through HUD's Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) Program, these projects will also develop new cross program approaches in HIV care by creating an Integrated HIV/AIDS Housing Plan in their communities.

"These resources will allow public agencies, nonprofits and housing authorities to forge new partnerships so that together, we can deliver comprehensive housing solutions and services for low-income families dealing with HIV," HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said. "These communities will be innovating to more effectively and efficiently assist vulnerable households with HIV and serve as models for others to improve health outcomes and reduce risks of homelessness."

The Los Angeles County Commission on HIV is awarded a 2011 HOPWA competitive Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) grant in the amount of $1,375,000 to provide housing assistance and service coordination for persons with HIV never in care and for newly-diagnosed persons with HIV and their families in Los Angeles, CA who are homeless or have risks of homelessness under a Collaborative for Housing Integrated with Supportive Services (CHISS) project. The Alliance for Housing and Healing will master lease units of scattered-site rental housing to 50 households over the course of the 3-year grant period. CHISS will seek to streamline overlapping service delivery and develop braided funding and referral systems that support client transitions to stable arrangements in a model Integrated HIV/AIDS Housing Plan.

For more information contact:
Glenda Pinney, Planning Manager, Los Angeles County Commission on HIV, 3530 Wilshire Blvd.
Suite 1140, Los Angeles, CA 90010 Phone: (213) 639-6711
Email: gpinney@hiv.lacounty.gov

In collaboration with other parties, this group will offer supportive housing over the next three years to 208 households. Grants funded under this initiative advance HUD's implementation of the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) (http://aids.gov/federal-resources/policies/national-hiv-aids-strategy/) and will demonstrate models for a
next generation of improved coordination of housing and care for a vulnerable population. This better integration of housing support will also help achieve the Obama Administration's Opening Doors Strategy (http://www.usich.gov/PDF/OpeningDoors_2010_FSPPreventEndHomeless.pdf) to prevent and end homelessness.

The project was selected through a national HOPWA competition to identify Special Projects of National Significance that will help advance understanding and improve the delivery of housing and care for persons with HIV. HUD
received 46 proposals under this competition. The projects will provide housing assistance to eligible persons in their communities during the next three years. Planning efforts will also concurrently examine new approaches for comprehensively integrating local services and in coordinating and streamlining where possible the delivery of those services in their community.

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