WASHINGTON - President Bush and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez today announced more than $1 billion in grants to provide housing and supportive services to hundreds of thousands of homeless families and individuals across America. The announcement represents the largest amount of homeless assistance in history.

President Bush and Secretary Martinez made the announcement at SOME, So Others Might Eat, a Washington, D.C. community-based, non-profit organization that provides meals, housing and other services to the homeless.

"I am pleased to join President Bush in announcing the largest amount of homeless assistance in our nation's history," said Martinez. "These grants will not only provide food, shelter and job training but also new opportunities to bring hope and encouragement to our nation's homeless. Time and time again we've experienced our country's great generosity when fellow Americans are in need - and this is a perfect time to show our support for local charities and community caretakers who serve the homeless."

The grants, part of HUD's Continuum of Care and Emergency Shelter Grant programs, will help the homeless to find emergency shelter, transitional housing and a permanent home. The funding announced today will go to state and local governments and non-profit organizations in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam.

More than 2,500 individual projects, over 90 percent of which are administered by non-profit organizations, will receive Continuum of Care funding and will assist more than 200,000 families and individuals to find housing and supportive services they need to move toward the goal of self-sufficiency. More than 1,300 projects will serve homeless veterans. In addition, more than 400 projects, awarded a total of $133 million, will be operated by faith-based organizations.

Two types of grants will be awarded:

• Continuum of Care grants provide transitional and permanent housing opportunities. In addition, Continuum grants fund supportive services including job training, health care, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment, child care and living skills training.
• Emergency Shelter Grants help convert buildings into homeless shelters, assist the operations of shelters and fund related social services and homeless prevention activities.
  

Most of the funding, more than $941 million, will be awarded as Continuum of Care grants. These competitively awarded grants provide each community the flexibility to meet its own local homeless needs. Continuum grants assist communities in their outreach and assessment, emergency shelter, transitional housing and permanent housing.

HUD also distributes $150 million in Emergency Shelter Grants to state and local governments by formula to create, improve and operate emergency shelters for homeless people. The funds may also be used to provide essential services including job training, health care, drug/alcohol counseling, child care and other homelessness prevention activities.

More than $76 million of the Continuum of Care grants awarded today will go to the renewal of existing Shelter Plus Care projects which help pay rent and provide permanent housing for disabled homeless individuals. The Shelter Plus Care program also requires that projects assist homeless people with disabilities to live independently and provide needed supportive services from sources other than their Shelter Plus Care grant funds.

HUD and the Department of Health and Human Services are working closely to coordinate the government's approach to serving the homeless. The two departments are sponsoring training sessions with state agencies to improve access by homeless men and women to the services they need. Earlier this year, Martinez also reactivated the Interagency Council on the Homeless and put it back to work planning and coordinating federal homeless programs and offering assistance to those who help homeless Americans at the community level.

Ending chronic homelessness is a primary goal of HUD's homeless assistance programs. It's estimated 650,000 people are homeless on any given night in America. HUD's own report, Homelessness: Programs and People They Serve, found that homeless clients are predominantly male (68 percent) and a majority of homeless women (60 percent) have young children. Homeless individuals are about equally divided between non-Hispanic whites (41 percent) and African-Americans (40 percent). The report also found Hispanics account for approximately 11 percent of the nation's homeless population.

View a list of states and the amount received, by program.

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