NEWS

Learn More About: Emergency Solutions Grant-COVID spending for homelessness

BY JUDITH TACKETT

In 2020, Congress appropriated $4 billion of the CARES Act funds to cities to serve people experiencing homelessness through a program called Emergency Solutions Grants (ESG).

This signified about 17 times more funding than the annual allocation outside of the COVID emergency. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), these funds were designated “to prevent, prepare for, and respond to coronavirus, among individuals and families who are homeless or receiving homeless assistance and to support additional homeless assistance and homelessness prevention activities to mitigate the impacts created by coronavirus under the Emergency Solutions Grant program.”

In Nashville, the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency (MDHA) is the administrator of these HUD funds, and in summer of 2020, MDHA received an allocation of more than $10 million in Emergency Solutions Grant CARES Act (ESG-CV) dollars. This was 22 times more in ESG funding than the regular ESG allocation of $450,000 that Nashville received that same year.

MDHA published a Request for Applications (RFA) in the summer of 2020 for nonprofits to submit program suggestions. Nashville was among 30 cities that also received technical assistance by ICF (a consultant firm paid for by HUD). Local leadership was able to focus on using the existing collaborative community approach for stakeholder input while ICF came alongside with the expertise on how to prioritize funds for individuals experiencing long-term homelessness, a population that traditionally had been underfunded for years in Nashville. In the end, $6.9 million was dedicated to Rapid Re- Housing programs aimed at helping people move off the streets as quickly as possible.

In Tennessee, large cities like Nashville receive direct allocations from HUD. Rural areas receive their funding through the Tennessee Housing Development Agency (THDA). When THDA is unable to distribute all its funds, allocations are made available to cities including Nashville. That’s why a few months after HUD’s direct appropriation, Nashville received $2.4 million in additional ESG-CV funds from the state.

So, how many providers received funding and how many people were served in Nashville with the total of over $12.4 million in ESG-CV funds?

I requested information from MDHA and the Metro Homeless Impact Division (MHID), which was selected by the community to manage Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) — a database to measure homelessness outcomes. The federal government requires programs funded by ESG-CV grants to enter data into HMIS.

The programs at most of the nonprofits launched in October 2020. As of Feb. 28, 2022, 53 percent of the funds were invoiced to MHDA (officially spent down). HUD’s deadline to spend down these one-time funds for programs has been updated last week from September 2022 to September 2023 to help serve more people.

The different eligible expenditures include Operations/Essential Services including medical equipment to prevent COVID, cleaning supplies, staff to help with vaccination clinics, etc. Street outreach includes building relationships with people to ensure they can access services. Only 10 people were referred to prevention sources because other COVID funds such as the Emergency Rental Assistance managed by the Metro Action Commission were available for homelessness prevention. Therefore, the community decided to use homelessness funds to focus on people living in shelters and on the streets of Nashville. Rapid ReHousing paid for support services and rent assistance for up to two years. People are enrolled while still experiencing homelessness to receive assistance along the way of obtaining housing.

The numbers quoted in this article do not reflect additional housing placement rates outside of this funding source. Nearly 2,000 people (counting all funding sources including the ESG-CV funds) obtained housing with assistance from nonprofit providers from October 2020 to the end of December 2021. In the current housing market where people increasingly are at the brink of homelessness, it is critical for this community to use more local funds and invest heavily in homelessness grants to help people retain housing and assist more people off the streets with housing and support services.

By the time of this publication, the mayor will have held his State of Metro address, and I expect that this year’s Metro budget includes significant announcements for new permanent supportive housing options and assistance funds to serve people experiencing homelessness.