Continuums of Care (CoCs) are required to design and implement a collaborative process for their application for the CoC Program Competition. In recent years, HUD has been strongly encouraging (and incentivizing) CoCs to use objective, performance-based scoring criteria and selection priorities to determine which projects they will submit to HUD as part of their CoC Consolidated Application.
Importantly, HUD is emphasizing:
- This tool is optional; HUD is not promoting it over other tools CoCs currently use, HUD does not guarantee additional points in any CoC Program Competitions, nor is HUD implying that using it will guarantee project applications will be consistent with any specific Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) requirement. If your CoC’s existing review and ranking process is working well, HUD does not expect you to adopt this tool as part of your process.
- This tool provides a strong framework for implementing a data-driven process, including methodology on how to compare like projects that serve similar populations to each other. CoCs can rank projects based on CoC defined priorities for project type and population to help develop the priority listing for the CoC Consolidated Application.
- This tool can be used for the FY 2019 CoC Program Competition but is not tied to any specific CoC Application question, metric, or NOFA requirement.
- HUD intends for CoCs to customize this tool. While HUD included many objective performance metrics that tie back to the system performance measures, this tool will only meet your CoC’s needs if your CoC invests time and effort to customize it with objective measures that are important locally.
- This tool supports CoCs in their year-round review and ranking processes and can be adapted for use in broader system planning.
- Your CoC could benefit from reviewing the tool to determine if its existing tool or process could be improved, even if your CoC chooses not to adopt this tool as part of its review and ranking process.
Version Information: The latest version posted on the HUD Exchange includes an Update Tool option to automate the data migration process from the old version to the new version and includes other updates and fixes (see the ABOUT THE TOOL tab for a list of changes).
HUD's Office of Special Needs Assistance Programs (SNAPS) welcomes your feedback to improve such resources in the future at the HUD Exchange Ask A Question (AAQ) portal. On Step 2 of the question submission process, select “ e-snaps” from the “My question is related to” drop down list. You can also submit questions if your CoC encounters problems using the tool or has questions about updates. | 
