United States: Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program

Deadline: 27-Jul-21

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issues this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) to invite applications for the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program from eligible applicants for the program and purpose.

The goal of the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) is to support selected communities in the development and implementation of a coordinated community approach to preventing and ending youth homelessness, and sharing that experience with and mobilizing communities around the country toward the same end. The population to be served by this demonstration program is youth experiencing homelessness, including unaccompanied and pregnant or parenting youth. The demonstration has six primary objectives:

Build national momentum. Motivate state and local homelessness stakeholders and youth services providers, including Runaway and Homeless Youth providers across the country to prevent and end youth homelessness by forming new partnerships, addressing system barriers, conducting needs assessments, testing promising strategies, and evaluating their outcomes;
Promote equity in the delivery and outcomes of homeless assistance. Promote equity throughout the community’s youth homeless response system for Black, Indigenous, Hispanic (non-white), and LGBTQ youth who are disproportionally more likely to experience homelessness than their white, straight, and gender conforming counterparts. Awarded communities will promote equity throughout their youth homeless response system and all YHDP projects will measure and demonstrate equitable delivery and outcomes.
Evaluate the coordinated community approach. Evaluate coordinated community approaches to preventing and ending youth homelessness, including local and state partnerships across sectors and other planning operations;
Expand capacity. Expand community capacity to serve youth experiencing homelessness (particularly by using a Housing First approach), pilot new models of assistance, and determine what array of interventions is necessary to serve the target population in their community;
Evaluate performance measures. Evaluate the use of performance measurement strategies designed to better measure youth outcomes and the connection between youth program outcomes and youth performance measures on overall system performance for the Continuum of Care (CoC); and
Establish a framework for Federal program and TA collaboration. Determine the most effective way for Federal resources to interact within a state or local system to support a coordinated community approach to preventing and ending youth homelessness.