HUD Announces Annual Funding for Partners of The Way Home
On Monday, Jan. 29, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced Continuum of Care (CoC) Competition Awards for FY 2023.
Partner agencies of The Way Home — the local homeless response system for Harris, Fort Bend, and Montgomery counties, which CFTH coordinates — will receive $59 million.
The $59 million is, for the most part, a continuation of past annual grants. This annual CoC grant from HUD (which predates the pandemic) is the regular funding that our local homeless response system relies on to continue to provide housing and supportive services to people already in their programs.
HUD will make grants directly to nearly 30 agencies in our area. For a complete list of the agencies receiving funding and award amounts, click here.
“The annual funding from HUD is the lifeblood of our local homeless response system. Without it, we would not be able to continue to operate current programs that thousands of Houstonians rely on for housing and support services,” said Kelly Young, President & CEO of CFTH. “However, this grant doesn’t eliminate our need to secure additional sustainable local funding to replace the federal COVID relief dollars that have accelerated our work and will end at the end of 2024.”
“We cannot return to the time when these annual federal CoC dollars comprise the majority of our funding,” said Young. “As has the last few years have shown, it simply is not enough, even with the increase over last year’s grant. Homelessness response is now an ‘essential service,’ and our system requires sufficient funding to respond quickly and efficiently. We need this to be a priority issue for all public, private, and philanthropic funding sources.”
The $59 million includes $4.2 million for the Youth Homeless Demonstration Program (YHDP) and $6.2 million for new project funding.
While the number fluctuates as new clients move in and others move on, on a recent night there were more than 9,000 people in our community living in a housing program in The Way Home. The annual CoC dollars are crucial to keeping these programs running.
The annual CoC Competition Awards are the largest source of funding for the local homeless response system. For the FY 2022 competition, The Way Home received $46 million; in FY 2021 local agencies received $45.2 million.
Under the leadership of CFTH, the funding has increased from $25 million in 2012.
CFTH is the “collaborative applicant” for The Way Home. This means that CFTH organized the local funding competition for the direct services agencies, and we are proud to have helped bring this funding to the Houston region!
If you are interested in learning more about the NOFO process, please contact NOFO@homelesshouston.org.
