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HUD's Continuum of Care Competition for FY 2012 Now Open!
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Important Changes to This Year's Competition
 Today the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released its Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for the Continuum of Care (CoC) Program competition. This year's NOFA includes several important changes, including: - Approximately $1.61 billion is available for the CoC Program. To ensure that CoCs have the opportunity to prioritize their projects locally in the event that HUD is not able to fund all renewals, HUD is requiring that CoCs rank projects within 2 tiers in FY2012. Tier 1 is equal to the CoC's Annual Renewal Demand approved in the Registration process, less 3.5 percent. Tier 2 is the amount between a CoC's Tier 1 and the CoC's FPRN (Final Pro-Rata Need) and any approved amounts for CoC planning and the Permanent Housing Bonus.
- The FY2012 CoC Program Competition is the first funding competition to be administered under the CoC Program interim rule.
- All CoCs will be allowed to reallocate funding from existing renewal projects to new project applications without decreasing the CoCs Annual Renewal Demand. Rental assistance projects formerly awarded under the Shelter Plus Care (S+C) will also be eligible for reallocation.
- In accordance with Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness, HUD's priority is to end chronic homelessness by the end of 2015. In order to reach this national goal, HUD strongly encourages CoCs to include this priority as part of their local planning process and HUD must prioritize funding targeted to this population. In the FY2012 CoC Program competition, HUD's priority is the development of new permanent supportive housing projects that propose to serve 100 percent chronically homeless individuals and families, particularly those who have the longest history of homelessness. The Permanent Housing Bonus will be limited to projects that propose to exclusively serve chronically homeless individuals and families.
HUD encourages applicants and other interested parties to read the CoC Program NOFA in its entirety. In order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the requirements for the CoC Program and competition, a review of the CoC NOFA should be completed in conjunction with a thorough review of the CoC Program interim rule.
USICH encourages communities to take seriously the opportunities the HEARTH Act presents to evaluate the needs in your community and look for areas where repurposing or retargeting some of your CoC resources may be appropriate and effective. Now, more than ever, it is critically important that communities make smart, strategic decisions about how they spend their limited resources and how they plan to coordinate with their mainstream partners.
Stay tuned for an upcoming USICH newsletter and webinar to assist communities in the important work of preparing their applications and implementing the HEARTH Act.
The FY2012 CoC Program Competition opened November 9, 2012. CoC Collaborative Applicants and Project Applicants may now submit applications for funding in e-snaps. The competition will close at 7:59:59 p.m. EST on Friday, January 18, 2013.
Read the full NOFA
Access HUD's Resources on the FY 2012 CoC Competition
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