HUD MAKES $1.9 BILLION IN GRANTS AVAILABLE FOR HOMELESS PROGRAMS

WASHINGTON - As part of the Obama Administration's effort to prevent and effectively end homelessness, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced today that it will offer $1.9 billion for fiscal year 2015 to support existing and new homelessness programs. Funded through HUD's Continuum of Care (CoC) Homeless Assistance Program Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) (https://www.hudexchange.info/e-snaps/fy-2015-coc-program-nofa-coc-program-competition/), this notice will further incentivize local applicants to pursue permanent housing using a Housing First approach to target their resources to proven strategies.

The funding, for which the notice was published today, will provide permanent and transitional housing to people experiencing homelessness as well as services including housing stabilization, job training, and health care. Continuum of Care grants are awarded competitively to local programs to meet the needs of people experiencing homelessness. These grants fund a wide variety of programs from street outreach and assessment programs to transitional and permanent housing for individuals, including unaccompanied youth, and families.

For this CoC program competition, HUD has made several changes to the application process that will make it much more competitive and significantly increase incentives for communities to improve their performance. As part of these changes, HUD has expanded incentives to adopt best practices such as permanent supportive housing and rapid re-housing which will enable communities to further move the needle on ending homelessness.

Additionally, the CoC program NOFA encourages communities to end veteran, chronic, family, and youth homelessness as well as to use their data to allocate all resources available within the community to end homelessness. Finally, to help communities reach these goals, there is greater flexibility provided to create a variety of new projects that will allow recipients to serve different populations of individuals and families experiencing homelessness as well as to support increased data collection and analysis.

This competition is designed to promote proven strategies that have made a lasting impact on the local level," said HUD Secretary Julián Castro. "By empowering our partners with the resources, tools, and support that they need, we can move closer to the day when the United States ends homelessness — once and for all."

In 2010, President Obama and 19 federal agencies and offices that form the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) launched the nation's first comprehensive strategy to prevent and end homelessness. Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness (www.usich.gov/opening_doors/) serves as a roadmap for how the federal government will work with state and local communities to confront the root causes of homelessness. Since Opening Doors was published, HUD's homeless assistance grants have reduced homelessness in America, including for veterans, families, and people experiencing long-term or chronic homelessness.

HUD requires prospective grantees to submit applications electronically at www.grants.gov. Any changes to HUD-published funding notices will be made available to the public through a Federal Register publication and published on this government-wide portal. Applicants are urged to sign up for Grants.gov's notification service to receive periodic updates or changes to these grant offerings.

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HUD's mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. More information about HUD and its programs is available on the Internet at www.hud.gov and http://espanol.hud.gov.

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