HUD awards $15 million to various state programs

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has awarded over $15 million to 46 local homeless housing and service programs in Nevada including Fallon.

The Continuum of Care (CoC) grants provide critically needed housing and support services to individuals and families experiencing homelessness across the state. “Today marks another critical investment in support of those working each and every day to house and serve our most vulnerable neighbors,” said HUD Secretary Julián Castro. “We know how to end homelessness and will continue to encourage our local partners to use the latest evidence to achieve success. These grants support proven strategies to end homelessness once and for all.”

HUD Regional Administrator Jon Gresley said homelessness relies on local solutions.

“With these targeted awards, HUD strengthens its partnership with outcome-oriented homeless assistance agencies by investing in locally driven, evidence-based programs in the State of Nevada,” he said.

HUD continued to challenge state and local planners in 2016 to support higher performing local programs that have proven most effective in meeting their local challenges, often shifting funds from existing projects to create new ones that will have a more substantial and lasting impact on reducing homelessness.

In 2010, President Barack Obama and 19 federal agencies and offices that form the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness launched the nation’s first-ever comprehensive strategy to prevent and end homelessness. Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness puts the country on a path to end veterans and chronic homelessness as well as to end homelessness among children, family, and youth.

HUD estimates there were 7,398 persons experiencing homelessness on a single night across the State of Nevada in 2016. Since 2010, local Nevada communities reported a combined 34 percent decrease in the number of persons experiencing homelessness. In addition, Veteran homelessness fell by 31 percent[1], the number of chronically homeless individuals declined 77 percent and family homelessness fell by 67% statewide. Next month, HUD and local planners will launch a more robust effort to more accurately account for the youth and young adult population.

Across the nation, local homelessness planning agencies called ‘Continuums of Care’ will organize volunteers to help count the number of persons located in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs and living unsheltered on the streets. These Continuums of Care will report these one-night “point-in-time counts” in late 2016 and will form the basis of HUD’s 2017 national homeless estimate.