The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced nearly $3.16 billion in Continuum of Care program awards for over 7,000 projects that provide housing assistance and/or supportive services to people experiencing homelessness, as well as costs related to planning and data collection.
HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge made the announcement with the Chatham-Savannah Interagency Council on Homelessness in Savannah, Ga. The Chatham-Savannah Continuum of Care was awarded $4.1 million, HUD announced in a press release.
“Now, more than ever, we are doing all we can to get people off the street and into permanent homes with access to services. That is why we are making sure the service providers on the frontlines of this crisis have the resources they need,” Fudge said in a release. “At HUD, we have served or permanently housed 1.2 million people experiencing homelessness in the last three years alone, building on President Biden’s efforts to keep Americans housed. The historic awards we are announcing today will expand community capacity to assist more people in obtaining the safety and stability of a home, along with the supports they need to achieve their life goals.”
HUD’s Continuum of Care is the backbone federal program supporting community homelessness response systems across the country, providing grants to nonprofit providers, states, Indian tribes, and local governments for permanent and short-term housing assistance, supportive services, planning, data, and other costs, HUD said.
The $3.16 billion represents the largest-ever amount of Continuum of Care program funding awarded to communities to address homelessness in history and provides a critical expansion of resources at a time when rates of homelessness are rising in most communities. Of the $3.16 billion, approximately $136 million was made available for competitive and non-competitive Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program renewal and replacement grants. The 2023 awards also include approximately $57 million for new projects that will support housing and service needs for survivors of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
HUD encouraged communities to use proven solutions to address homelessness, such as approaches that first connect people to housing, often with supportive services, rather than requiring people experiencing homelessness to first complete a treatment program or achieve sobriety as a condition to accessing housing.
HUD also expanded the Continuum of Care program’s eligible activities to support protections available through the Violence Against Women Act Reauthorization Act of 2022 and to address the unique challenges Continuums of Care face when serving people experiencing homelessness in rural areas. The new eligible activities will allow for greater support for underserved populations.
Successful applicants demonstrated their communitywide commitment to ending homelessness by highlighting local partnerships with health agencies, mainstream housing agencies, and others. Many communities are particularly focused on reducing unsheltered homelessness through a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach.
The Biden-Harris administration has been tackling the nation’s homelessness crisis, prioritizing new resources and programs to help communities quickly reconnect people experiencing homelessness to housing. Homelessness has risen each year since 2016, with the exception of between 2020 and 2022, when the Biden-Harris administration’s pandemic-era protections and programs such as the scaling of additional Emergency Rental Assistance, and implementation of the enhanced Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, prevented evictions and kept homelessness flat.
The administration has also partnered with state and local leaders across the country to support their efforts. These investments are in addition to sweeping new efforts taken by President Biden to increase housing supply, lower costs, and protect renters, including through the first-ever Housing Supply Action Plan and Blueprint for a Renters Bill of Rights.
The Biden-Harris administration continues its efforts to not only stop but reverse the post-2016 rise in homelessness, as stated in All In, The Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, which the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness released in December 2022. Biden’s FY2024 budget calls for Congress to take further action to address homelessness and keep Americans in their homes, such as commonsense investments to lower rental costs and guaranteed vouchers for low-income veterans and youth aging out of foster care, who are typically at higher risk of becoming homeless.