U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan has announced that HUD will award $1.63 billion for Fiscal Year 2011 to support nearly 7,000 existing homeless assistance programs currently operating and create additional new homeless assistance programs with the Continuum of Care (CoC) Homeless Assistance Program Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA).
The funding will provide permanent and transitional housing to homeless persons, as well as services including job training, health care, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment and child care. Continuum of Care grants are awarded competitively to local programs to meet the needs of their homeless clients. These grants fund a wide variety of programs from street outreach and assessment programs to transitional and permanent housing for homeless persons and families.
“Supporting funding to our homeless programs helps the federal government save taxpayer dollars by ending the costly cycling through shelters, emergency rooms, detox centers, and hospitals”, said Secretary Donovan. “We mustn’t forget the nation’s most vulnerable citizens and I am glad that Congress has also recognized the importance and success of our homeless work by continuing to fully fund this effort.”
HUD’s homeless assistance grants are reducing long-term or chronic homelessness in America. Based on HUD’s latest homeless assessment, chronic homelessness has declined since 2005 due to significant investments to produce thousands of units of permanent supportive housing for those who had been living on the streets. While the total number of homeless persons in America dropped slightly between 2008 and 2009, the number of homeless families increased for the second consecutive year, almost certainly due to the ongoing effects of the recession.
In addition to HUD’s annual grant awards, HUD allocated $1.5 billion through its new Homeless Prevention and Rapid Re-housing (HPRP) Program. Made possible through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, HPRP is intended to prevent persons from falling into homelessness or to rapidly re-house them if they do. To date, nearly one million people have been assisted through HPRP.
Last year, 19 federal agencies in the Obama Administration announced a plan to end all homelessness through Opening Doors, a federal strategy to end veteran and chronic homelessness by 2015, and to end homelessness among children, families, and youth by 2020. In addition to the Continuum of Care grant program, HUD’s new Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing (HPRP) Program made possible through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 is making a major contribution to the Opening Doors strategy. To date, HPRP has allocated $1.5 billion to prevent more than 875,000 people from falling into homelessness or to rapidly re-house them if they do.
