HUD seeks cross-agency approach to homelessness

Key Takeaways

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has shifted away from its previous Housing First model and moved toward prioritizing more transitional housing with wraparound services to tackle homelessness and promote “self-efficiency,” according to Ronnie Kurtz, HUD’s assistant secretary for community planning and development. 

“We are acutely aware that D.C. is not where the action happens, it happens in your local communities and in your counties,” Kurtz said Feb. 22 at a NACo Large Urban County Caucus (LUCC) meeting. 

“So, the quicker that we can get our funds out of headquarters and down to you all at the local level, the more quickly we can have an effective impact on what's going on there,” he said.

Partnership between counties and HUD is essential, as federal housing policy shapes the tools counties depend on to deliver results on the ground, from continuum of care funding to disaster recovery resources, said Los Angeles County, Calif. Supervisor Kathryn Barger.

“Across the nation, our counties are on the frontlines of addressing two deeply connected challenges, housing affordability and homelessness,” Barger said. “Every day, we are working to stabilize families, expand access to affordable housing and ensure that individuals experiencing homelessness can connect to services that they need. None of this work happens in isolation.”

In the aftermath of the Eaton and Palisades fires, HUD quickly provided resources to Los Angeles County, including activating Rapid Unsheltered Survivor Housing (RUSH) grants, Mega Waivers and the Emergency Solutions Grants program, Barger noted. The assistance allowed the county to deploy emergency housing vouchers and reutilize funds already allocated to it through other programs to address disaster issues as quickly as possible. 

It’s going to take cross collaboration to ensure the United States is “attacking [homelessness] from all directions,” Kurtz said, noting that HUD is working closely with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Labor to streamline programming. HUD has also streamlined the environmental review process for Community Development Block Grant funding, so counties don’t have to go through the process again with HUD if it’s already been approved by another agency, according to Kurtz. 

“A lack of affordable housing is one driver of homelessness,” Kurtz said. “But mental health problems, substance abuse and lack of available job training are also drivers of that.”

A federal court preliminary injunction issued in December halted HUD’s new Continuum of Care program Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFOs), pausing the department’s ability to cap funding for Permanent Supportive Housing. 

The NOFO changes would “prioritize competition among new mental health service providers that focus on drug addiction treatment and that hope to use federal programs not as a hammock, but as a trampoline back to self-sufficiency,” Kurtz said. 

“… I think this is a unique opportunity we have here in this country to increase the capacity to address the homelessness issue by increasing the amount of people who are going through the system and getting back to self-sufficiency and also increasing the amount of people who are providing the services.”