U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Shaun Donovan today awarded $181,788 in a second round of grants to support local homeless and service programs in West Virginia. Provided through HUD’s Continuum of Care programs, funding announced today will ensure these homeless assistance programs remain operating in the coming year.
“These investments in housing the homeless save money and lives,” said Donovan. “Local programs are the front lines of the Obama Administration’s efforts to prevent and end homelessness once and for all.”
While the Fiscal Year 2012 funds awarded today are not impacted by the automatic across-the-board budget cuts under sequestration that began March 1, Donovan cautioned that future budget cuts may reverse significant reported decreases in homelessness: “During this challenging budget climate, we must make certain that we don’t balance our books on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens.”
HUD’s Continuum of Care grants will continue offering permanent and transitional housing to homeless persons as well as services, including job training, health care, mental health counseling, substance abuse treatment and child care. These competitively awarded grants fund a wide variety of programs from street outreach and assessment programs to transitional and permanent housing for homeless persons and families.
“These grants will support two homeless providers in West Virginia as they work to effectively address the needs of the homeless community,” said Jane C.W. Vincent, HUD’s Regional Administrator of the Mid-Atlantic region.
In December, HUD announced its 2012 “point in time” estimate of the number of homeless persons in America. Approximately 3,000 cities and counties reported 633,782 homeless persons on a single night in January of 2012, largely unchanged from the year before. While HUD found a significant decline among the long-term homeless and veterans, local communities reported an increase in the number of sheltered and unsheltered families with children. In West Virginia, local communities reported a 9 percent overall rise in homelessness in 2012.
In 2010, President Obama and 19 federal agencies and offices that form the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) launched the nation’s first 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 chronic and veterans’ homelessness by 2015 and to ending homelessness among children, family, and youth by 2020.
On March 13, 2013, HUD awarded additional support to hundreds of other existing local programs and will make a third round of funding available to selected new projects later this year. View a complete list of the West Virginia homeless projects awarded funding in Tiers 1 and 2 <http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/comm_planning/homeless/budget/2012>.
