The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released the 2017 Continuum of Care (CoC) Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) in July. The Alliance has a lot of resources which you can see here. Sign up for our newsletter to get more of our observations about the Competition.
What is this Transitional Housing-Rapid Re-Housing Joint Component? Is it Right for Our CoC?
Last week we held a webinar that covered what’s new and notable with this year’s CoC NOFA. A major focus of our webinar, and a major change to this year’s CoC NOFA, is the new TH-RRH Joint Component. The joint component combines transitional housing and rapid re-housing into a single project. CoC’s can consider reallocating current renewal projects to a project that, for the first time, can serve people in temporary housing and provide those same participants with a permanent housing exit paid for with rapid re-housing dollars.
While the joint component provides low-barrier and safe place for individual and families experiencing homelessness to stay temporarily, it is not CoC funding for more emergency shelter beds. Think of it as crisis housing coupled with financial assistance and services. Those services should be determined by participants, and focused on moving people quickly to permanent housing.
So, what type of communities should consider the joint component? In our webinar we outline a few scenarios we think make sense. If your community has:
- Large numbers of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness;
- That lack crisis housing capacity to shelter everyone experiencing unsheltered homelessness;
- That lack strategies to exit people into permanent housing quickly; and
- Whose shelters stays are brief (i.e. Less than 30 days)…
You may want to consider the joint component.
What do I do with all my Joint Component technical questions?
Many webinar attendees had questions pertaining to what the suggested length of stay in the crisis portion of the project should be, whether participants in a currently funded transitional housing projects can be served in a Joint Component project, what eligible expenses include, etc. We recommend you review the e-SNAPS project application instructions for guidance on these issues as well as consider submitting a question to HUD’s Ask A Question portal.
To all the CoC’s and project applicants out there, good luck and find a moment to take a breather! You’re amazing!
For additional information on the joint component (and the DedicatedPlus project) please also see the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness’ recent blog, “Highlights from the NOFA: Opportunities to Expand Housing Supports and Improve System Performance.”