Ensuring New Federal and State COVID Youth Homelessness Funding

COVID-19 is giving us a chance to reconsider and reimagine where and how extant funding structures are helpful or harmful to young people experiencing homelessness, particularly youth of color and LGBTQ youth. Let's create an opportunity to reflect and reconfigure funding systems and structures to better meet the needs of young people experiencing homelessness.

The CARES Act and upcoming new federal funding for COVID can and must be used for housing for youth experiencing homelessness. Learn best practices to ensure your local community has access to them for housing for youth who are experiencing homelessness and housing instability. 

Speakers:

  • Ann Oliva, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Visiting Senior Fellow

  • Sarah Hunter, National Innovation Service, Managing Director, Center for Housing Justice

Q&A from the Deep Dive

What would you want folks to know about current and future federal funding that they can use to prevent and end youth homelessness?

“What I would say is that right now, we have one full package of COVID-19 funding available called the CARES Act. Most of you have heard this in the news and maybe have been talking about it within your own communities. Focus on the housing portion of The CARES Act. In the housing portion, really focus on the Emergency Solutions Grants program and the CDBG block grant program. There’s also a very big appropriation of funding that goes to states that’s called the Coronavirus Relief Fund. We got about $4 billion in ESG CDGB funding through the CARES Act and that funding is focused on people who are experiencing homelessness and near risk of homelessness. The Community Development Block Grant funding is much broader and can be used for a variety of uses or activities--and Coronavirus Relief Funds are the most flexible. We have been asking communities to use ESG funding to serve people who are experiencing homelessness first.``-Ann

What would you want to see in the next funding package? 

“The next package needs to bridge that gap to make sure we have enough funds to keep people, to get people into housing, to continue to do the kinds of interventions that would work for them, and to get us to long-term systems transformation goals. The youth and young adult movement is further along than a lot of other parts of homelessness system and will lead as we go forward [...]

I would like to see universal vouchers. That’s something that will help us end homelessness for everyone. And I know we’ve been talking about universal vouchers for young people and how that can make a foundational difference in how we’re helping people who experience housing instability. I’d also like to see support for housing choice voucher programs.” -Ann

Do you have a sense of what’s working locally and what’s not working locally to prevent and end youth homelessness?

“[A huge help to forming local solutions has been] having young people a part of the conversations. Having young people making decisions is not what happens by chance, it’s a difficult thing to do authentically, and takes a lot of intention and work. So YHDP communities have been doing that to varying degrees, and some doing it better than others… Where folks are doing things differently, it’s being led by young people. And they’re paying young people for their labor.” – Sarah

“Build services and programs that are based in dignity and designed and implemented by people who have experienced the same kind of crisis--this is what young people have been saying all along. Let [young people] design the services and housing structures that [they] need. [...] Get police out of homelessness responses. Align with broader efforts to divest from police forces across the country. Let’s be explicit about de-criminalizing homelessness, and let’s keep the police out of our response to homelessness. That means putting investments in other places.”  – Sarah

How can we create more flexible solutions to address youth homelessness, like direct cash transfers?

“[We need to source] more evidence that DCT programs make a difference in young people’s lives. [If we look at the long-term, we need a] systems shift so that everyone has basic income without having to jump through a lot of hoops to receive cash. CBPP has looked at EBT cards to provide some cash to folks. It’s an easy way to use an existing mechanism while working towards universal basic income. [There is a] lot of opportunity to innovate if we have the right political will to do that.” – Ann

Action Steps

Create opportunities for young people to lead. Having young people be part of the decision-making process needs to be intentional. Commit to working through the difficult parts of these collaborations and pay young people for their labor.

  1. Leverage opportunities the pandemic has created in re-thinking how we work to end youth homelessness and fund the solutions. 

  2. Seek out local folks who are making the consolidated plans for what to do with federal funding--make sure young people are included in these plans and part of the conversation.

  3. Find people who have Emergency Solutions Grant dollars and ask them to connect you to folks receiving CDBG funding, so folks with expertise and young people with lived expertise are able to impact what’s happening on the CBDG side.

Read more:

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Transforming Your Community with YHDP: Lessons Learned & the New 2021 YHDP NOFO

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ADDITIONAL Waivers to ESG Funded Programs that affect Rapid Re-housing Programs and New ESG Funding Appropriations