Alliance Online News: HUD Makes Funding Available to PHAs for HUD-VASH

Alliance Online News View in browser www.endhomelessness.org Tuesday, August 25, 2015 spotlight on... HUD Makes Funding Available to PHAs Administering HUD-VASH There’s a new funding stream available to Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) that serve homeless veterans. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has released an additional $10 million to help fund administrative tasks like housing search assistance and landlord recruitment. According to Amy Ginger, director of Housing Voucher Programs at HUD, the money will be given out on a first-come, first-served basis. Applications are due by November 13. Read HUD's letter to PHAs » alliance events UPCOMING WEBINAR: COORDINATED ENTRY AND SYSTEMS CHANGE Wednesday, September 9, 2 to 3 p.m. EDT On Wednesday, September 9, the Alliance will host a webinar for communities that are just getting started with coordinated entry or working to improve their existing coordinated entry systems. Speakers in this webinar will provide an overview of coordinated entry, as well as the critical components: access, diversion, assessment and prioritization, and referral. Register » from the blog Ending Homelessness Today the official blog of the national alliance to end homelessness Does this Sound Like Your Continuum of Care? You Need a Leader by Anna Blasco Imagine trying to commute to work in a city where each bus makes up its own schedule and route and sets its own prices. You might eventually get where you’re going, but it would be an inefficient, frustrating process. It’s much easier to commute in a city with a coordinated transit system. So why is it when we think of the response to homelessness in our communities, we often think of programs like shelters or housing programs that operate independently? That’s changing. Across the country a big shift is happening behind the scenes. Rather than a number of programs serving their clients as best they can on their own, whole communities are working together to build effective systems to produce a coordinated response to homelessness. Read more » comments » | Don't Criminalize Homelessness. End It. by Emanuel Cavallaro Say you’re homeless and you live in a city with a growing homeless population. At night, the shelters may be crowded or filled, and during the day the shelters don’t provide a place to sleep. You're exhausted and have to sleep somewhere, but you have no options. What do you do? Every day and every night, thousands of homeless people find themselves in this very situation. So they find a park or a place on a sidewalk or somewhere else not fit for human habitation. They do the best they can to make themselves comfortable and they fall asleep. Should that be a crime? Read more » comments » | Can You Use Rapid Re-Housing to Serve Homeless Youth? Some Providers Already Are. by Mindy Mitchell Ever since the days of the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP), communities have been using rapid re-housing to making great strides toward ending homelessness. And while we know that rapid re-housing, which provides short-term subsidies to get homeless people into housing and back on their feet, is much more cost-effective than traditional homelessness interventions, some people still assume the model won’t work for homeless youth. But youth providers around the country are already proving that assumption wrong. Read more » comments » |