HUD announces new funding for Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program

Key Takeaways

On March 24, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for the department’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) authorized by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.

YDHP is an initiative to support selected communities, including rural, suburban, and urban areas across the United States, in the development and implementation of a coordinated community approach to preventing and ending youth homelessness.

Notable goals of the program include:

• Motivate state and local homelessness stakeholders and youth services providers to form new partnerships and address system barriers
• Promote equity in the delivery and outcomes of homeless assistance
• Highlight the importance of youth leadership
• Expand capacity by primarily using a Housing First Approach that prioritizes rapid placement and stabilization in housing that does not have service participation requirements or preconditions
• Evaluate the coordinated community approach and evaluate performance measures. Design strategies to better measure youth outcomes and the connection between youth program outcomes and youth performance measures on overall system performance for the Continuum of Care (CoC); and
• Establish a federal framework to determine the most effective way to utilize federal resources

The program has a total of $72 million in available funds, with grants ranging from $1 million to $15 million based on each community’s youth population size and poverty rate. HUD expects to issue awards to approximately 25 communities and will place a priority for communities with substantial rural populations. Awards can be used towards any number of projects in the community.

Once HUD announces the selected communities, they will have a total of six months to submit a coordinated community plan (CCP), with the ability to request a three-month extension. After the CCP is approved, applicants may apply for projects up to the total amount made available to the community under the YHDP.

Counties can apply directly for the grant here. Applications will close on June 28, 2022.