By Erica C. Barnett

After a long delay resulting in part from a lawsuit by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has released a Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for $4 billion in federal funding for homeless shelters and transitional housing. The new guidelines signal a move toward federal funding for temporary transitional housing, street outreach, and faith-based programs that have not previously received federal dollars, and away from permanent supportive housing for chronically homeless people.

The result could be a significant reduction in federal funding for local homelessness programs and a resurgence in funding for transitional housing. Seattle, like many other cities, moved away from transitional housing about a decade ago in favor of permanent housing programs like rapid rehousing—essentially, subsidies for people to rent in the private market—and permanent supportive housing. The annual NOFO is administered by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority (KCRHA), acting as the Continuum of Care (CoC) for the Seattle region.

The new guidelines serve as a replacement for a proposal last year that homeless service providers and advocates said would make it virtually impossible for Seattle-area programs to get federal funding, largely because they placed a 30 percent on funding for permanent supportive housing programs, which make up the bulk of federally funded homelessness programs in Seattle and King County.

While the new NOFO no longer includes this cap, it also makes about 40 percent of the package newly competitive, using a points system that awards extra points to programs that promote “self-sufficiency” and include service participation requirements, such as mandatory substance abuse treatment.

Currently, almost all of the federal funding for homelessness programs in the region, around $60 million (of $67 million total), goes toward permanent supportive housing for people with disabilities, including mental illness and addiction, who need intensive case management and other services.

The new NOFO includes pages and pages of bellicose language about “housing first”—the idea that housing is a necessary condition for recovery and self-sufficiency—calling the approach “a profound failure by any measure.” (Conservatives and the Trump Administration have defined “housing first,” inaccurately, as “housing only,” when such programs actually include supportive services designed to address underlying conditions that lead or contribute to homelessness.)

And it specifically calls out Seattle and King County, along with Portland, as areas of the country where overdoses are high and crime related to homelessness is supposedly out of control.

“HUD is restoring the CoC program to its original goals of reducing homelessness and optimizing self-sufficiency by focusing on meaningful outcomes, expanding  competition, prioritizing treatment, economic independence, and emphasizing law and order,” the NOFO says.

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Despite some over-the-top political rhetoric, the new requirements do not include restrictions such as mandatory sobriety. They do require homeless service providers to “attest” that they won’t operate safe drug consumption sites or ” knowingly permit the use or distribution of illicit drugs on property under their control” under a law widely known as the “crack house law.” That law says no one can own or lease a property “for the purpose of” manufacturing or selling illegal drugs, a provision that has not been applied to housing for unsheltered people.

The new application guidelines also open the door for nontraditional providers, including faith-based groups and organizations that do outreach, to get federal funding. The guidelines give extra points for organizations who “cooperate and [do] not interfere or impede with the enforcement of local laws such as public camping and public drug use laws and assist/be willing to assist first responders in their efforts to engage homeless individuals.”

A group of providers, advocates, and elected officials are meeting this afternoon to discuss the possible implications of the new NOFO rules.

Earlier this week, HUD also released the national results of the annual Point in Time Count, traditionally a one-night count of unsheltered people conducted in January. That count found 16,936 people living unsheltered in the King County region. The KCRHA had planned to release its own PIT count, which is based on one-on-one interviews and statistical sampling, last week, but is now delaying the release until later this month.