Balance of State Continuum of Care
Information and resources for the Balance of State Continuum of Care (BoSCoC), a funding source which serves homeless populations in New Hampshire
Public Notices
Public Notices
The Bureau of Housing Supports, as the collaborative applicant for the Balance of State Continuum of Care (BoSCoC), is designed to promote communitywide assistance during the application process for Continuum of Care funding from HUD. The BoSCoC funding serves homeless populations through permanent supportive housing, transitional housing, rapid re-housing, supportive services, and HMIS projects, and is accessed through an annual application process.
New Hampshire has three Continuums of Care (CoC), The Greater Nashua (GNCoC), Manchester (MCoC) and Balance of State (BoSCoC), through which federal funding from HUD comes into NH. Additionally, the Bureau of Housing Supports (BHS) is the NH State recipient for Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) funding for the state. The BoSCoC has subcommittees that focus on Chronic Homelessness, Veteran Homelessness, and Youth Homelessness (including pregnant and parenting youth and young adults).
The state also funds homeless services annually and oversees the administration of the federal Health and Human Services (HHS) Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) funded Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness (PATH) outreach program, the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) that assists with the development of a coordinated community plan to prevent and end youth homelessness and the state (Housing Opportunities for Person’s with Aids) HOPWA program grants. This allows the BHS to ensure coordination of services and communications among outreach, shelter and transitional and Permanent Supportive Housing Programs.
The BHS mission, in addition to coordinating funding, is facilitate collaboration between all of NH’s homeless assistance programs, ensuring alignment with common goals and efficient utilization resources. BHS coordinates regular meetings for statewide Outreach staff, Shelter Directors, and Permanent Supportive Housing case managers to share information on various initiatives, provide technical assistance and foster communication and coordination of services. BHS staff co‐chair or participate in a number of community task forces and committees including the NH Homeless Veterans Committee, North Country Veterans Committee, and the Youth Subcommittee which are each focused on addressing the needs among each of these groups. BHS has also worked with providers to increase the number of CoC and ESG funded rapid rehousing programs across the state to better reduce and shorten the time families experience homelessness.
BoSCoC 2022 Meetings
Notice of Funding Opportunity Meeting, August 9, 2022
Notice of Funding Opportunity Meeting, August 9, 2022
Notice of Funding Opportunity Meeting, August 9, 2022
Transcript of video:
0:00
right and we're cool there it goes i am recording this um because i know that we scheduled this
0:07
very last minute not everyone that wants to get this information will be able to participate so we do plan to get this
0:14
posted on uh the dhhs youtube video or channel
0:19
today and we'll send that link out to our entire network um so for anyone who doesn't know me or
0:26
who's starting to log on i'm melissa hatfield i'm the bureau chief for the bureau of housing supports
0:31
uh bhs is the collaborative applicant for the balance of state continuum of care
0:38
um for those of you who have participated in a continuum of care competition in
0:44
the past throw out everything you remember because our time frame shrunk to about this big and we are um
0:52
the name of the game is flexibility and adjusting this year so
0:58
i'm thanking you in advance for your patience and understanding through this entire process
1:05
usually we have about 90 days for this full competition from the date it was released till the
1:11
date it's due we had 60 and we are down to i'm looking at my countdown we are down to 52 days as of
1:18
today for when this is due um these are not time frames set by me they
1:25
are not time frames i enjoy or appreciate um but they are time frames that we are
1:31
working within um real quick some of the the time frames
1:37
that are going to impact all of you the most are project applications
1:42
um hud sets a deadline of 30 days before
1:47
the due date i have my binders behind me i'm not reading it exactly project applications are due into
1:55
the collaborative applicant that's august 30th um hud has not released the project
2:02
application templates yet so we can't even give you exactly what hud's looking
2:07
for yet because they haven't released them to us so what's going to happen today
2:14
is a very high level overview of everything that's coming and maybe not everything because we
2:20
don't know it all yet um we are not going to be voting on anything in
2:26
this meeting as i originally thought we would because we just have not been able to put everything together that we need
2:32
to in order to vote and i know that we don't have enough people here so we will be doing electronic votes as allowed by
2:39
our governance charter all in one survey monkey so the whole survey will go out
2:44
you'll get a description of what we're asking you to vote on um and it will be a relatively quick
2:52
turnaround that we're asking for the other thing that we don't know yet is exactly how much bonus funding we
2:59
have available we have an estimate based on old numbers in our grant inventory
3:04
worksheet um we don't know exactly what our domestic violence bonus
3:10
is yet and we um we think we know what our reallocation total is but we'll put it
3:16
all out at the same time together so
3:22
so that being said if everyone could introduce yourself in the chat your name the agency you work for anything else
3:29
you would like to identify with your pronouns if you'd like to do that um we encourage you to
3:36
share your representation with us i am going to turn it over to melanie mondello from the technical assistance
3:42
collaborative um to give us the high level overview of this year's competition and then we will
3:49
talk about the supplemental competition for rural and unsheltered homelessness
3:55
we will talk a little bit about hud's priorities in this boring tool and then we'll wrap it all up at the end so
4:00
melanie will you need to share your screen yes please okay give me half a second here
4:05
okay so for those of you that haven't met me um my name is melanie mondello and i work for the technical assistance
4:12
collaborative otherwise known as tac um and i've been working with new hampshire for i guess almost 10 years um
4:19
on this nofo coc program fund so like melissa said we have a really short time frame
4:25
so that's not great but you have a lot of experience behind you and you have systems in place
4:32
so we're just trying to move as fast as possible while keeping integrity to get you the information you need if you're
4:38
considering a new project this year under the regular nofo which melissa you may have said already
4:44
is different than the special nofo that you've probably been talking about in other forums so this is regular coc business um
4:52
what i'd like to do is um i did a summary of the no flow what's been available to
4:59
us so far everything has not been released so it's an abbreviated summary it is 11 pages which i'm not going to
5:06
read to you but i want to share them on the screen and i'll kind of roll through and try not to make everyone too dizzy
5:13
as we go through just to give you the highlights about where hud's putting their priorities this year
5:18
and kind of what we can expect when they do publish the questions out and we're able to actually start writing
5:24
um the responses that you need to get some money into new hampshire so and we
5:30
will share all of these documents after the fact we just don't have them right this moment to
5:37
share so stay tuned for everything coming from us we will make sure you get it yes so melissa already went over the
5:43
time frame so i'm just gonna everyone can kind of close their eyes as i scroll down to the important part there we go
5:50
so um this year hud uh it's a 200 point scale with 25 bonus points
5:56
um this chart is helpful just so you can see where kind of hud is putting their priorities
6:02
so you can see like what kind of community responses we're going to be speaking to in the questions
6:07
so you can see coordination which is number one and coordination which is number six
6:13
are you know half the points of the whole competition so coordination engagement of people
6:19
with lived experience engagement of stakeholders all of that is really where hud is putting a lot of emphasis and then
6:26
also you'll see number five system performance something we've talked about every year
6:31
uh biggest change there is last year they gave us a little bit of a break because of the pandemic and this year
6:37
they put all the points back so you're going to be you know judged on what was submitted i think it was last april or
6:43
maybe february whatever your community submitted based on performance measures
6:50
that data will inform part of the points and our narrative about what we're doing to
6:56
stop people from entering homelessness get them out of homelessness quickly all of those things our narrative about your
7:02
community response will be the remainder of the point so some of it is predetermined based on
7:07
data you've already submitted some of it we have a little bit of control over as we talk about your community response
7:14
so this is nothing that any of you have to like dig into deeply uh christy melissa and mandy and i will dig deep
7:21
into this when huda gives us the questions but just wanted you to kind of see where hud was putting um their emphasis
7:28
this year around where they want you to spend your time as a homeless response system
7:35
i'm going to scroll down past some of this attachment
7:40
so new key changes the 200 points so it's more points which means more
7:46
questions which is fine um the biggest change this year is they put back the tiers so i think there's
7:52
some new faces here um what hud does is they say hey balance of state new hampshire
7:58
you have this many renewal projects it's worth i'm just going to make up a number five million dollars
8:04
and then they say well you can have 95 of that 5 million as long as you put in an application do a pretty decent job
8:10
we're going to guarantee you basically 95 of your current money and then they make you compete
8:17
for the other part so this year it's called tier one and tier two tier one is going to be 95 percent of
8:22
the current renewal projects are mostly guaranteed use that word lightly with
8:28
federal government funding um and then five percent of it is going to be competitive nationally you all do
8:34
well you do well in the competition i anticipate you'll continue to do well but it is stressful for whatever project
8:42
is in that five percent we just want to acknowledge that but these are the rules that hud has set up
8:47
maybe it will be a new project based on reallocation funds but it just you know we wanted to tell people the tiering is
8:53
back so when you see the project list that christy publishes you'll see tier one
8:59
tier two and then our tv bonus project so just wanted everyone to know that
9:05
um i think this part here is what people will be most excited about uh new projects there is coc bonus
9:12
project funding there is dv db tv bonus project funding available
9:19
the biggest change here is some of you may remember last year hud did bonus points
9:25
to talk about um to incentivize you to do partnerships in a new project application to bring in money
9:33
right money and resources from either places that had housing funds for
9:38
subsidies or actual units and a second bucket of bonus points for
9:44
projects that could bring in formal written agreements with health care entities to provide some of the support
9:50
of services that people need when they're um exiting homelessness and going into some of these programs
9:57
so those changed from bonus points last year to regular points this year
10:02
and when i did the math hud is really serious about these we knew that but they kind of put their money where their
10:08
priorities were the new questions around new projects with housing subsidies that aren't coc
10:14
or esg funded and new health care partnerships that bring money into projects
10:20
each of those questions is worth three and a half of the points three and a half percent of the points available
10:26
so seven percent of a national competition is based on checking the box on these two things so that's going to
10:32
be really important as you think about new projects as you apply for the bonus the db bonus
10:38
and any reallocation money that if you could bring this to the table it helps your coc stay competitive and i my
10:46
disclaimer i'm all about the points during the nofo it also helps because it gets better projects
10:52
but for this conversation it helps you stay competitive so you can continue to get additional money every year and keep
10:59
all of your current projects as you'd like to see them so i'm going to stop there for half a second and see if
11:05
there's any questions that came up or if i'm just talking in greek if anybody needs me to decode a
11:11
little better about hudspeak
11:16
any questions your all the cameras are over here so i'm just looking over here i have a quick one when when do we find
11:23
out that uh whether we're in tier one or tier two when does that list come out from melissa
11:29
i can review that at the end melanie i get the time frame kind of built out um
11:35
[Music] that makes sense yeah ellen let me i'll pull it up and i'll have that answer for
11:41
you before it's over okay good yeah we will have a final priority
11:46
listing and the ranking and scorings will go out per usual and you will have a chance to appeal
11:52
as well um which is built in i just want to remind everybody that all of your annual
11:58
performance reports which is part of the scoring process were previously sent out this year for
12:03
all of your agencies to review um and you are being scored on the calendar year of 2021.
12:14
okay um so i wanted to highlight that the
12:20
emphasis on building equity into your system is also actually written in even more deeply into the nofo
12:27
this year um they uh the first year they started talking about this they wanted evaluation the
12:33
second year they wanted plans so they kind of keep saying you'll evaluate you'll plan you'll implement so
12:39
this year they're really looking for evaluation they're looking for what you actually
12:45
did so the plan and then what you did and then that you implemented evaluation
12:50
so you've made it you've evaluated what issues there are you've done something to rectify those issues
12:57
and then looking at did what you do right um increase equity decrease disparity so
13:05
well again we're waiting for the questions we don't know exactly what hud wants us to speak about there but that's the general kind of guidance that
13:11
they've given um that we'll need to speak about this year they also um it's a little later in
13:18
the document but i'll speak to it now they also are emphasizing uh what's happening at
13:24
the project level so a lot of it has been about um
13:29
uh the coc policy here right um for
13:34
equity anti-discrimination but you can see here they have talked
13:39
now about developing provider anti-discrimination policies and making
13:44
sure there's feedback and assistance on that so there may be questions this year where we have to follow up with you all
13:51
to say okay this is what we do at the coc level we need a little bit more detail about what you do at the agency level again waiting for the details um
14:00
uh on that and then you know yeah they did define um underserved communities so
14:06
if that's something that um you think applies to any of your area i would read that definition
14:12
and see it might be something we have to speak to when they um publish the questions but again we don't know the
14:18
questions yet um so that's some of the just highlights of what we've seen around um
14:24
[Music] equity um for anti-discrimination policies and questions that are going to be coming
14:30
our way for policy priorities um you know typical fashion these are all the things
14:37
that you should be doing right everything under the sun or the all the policy priorities are all the
14:42
policies but um you all again do some really good stuff in this area there'll be plenty to talk
14:49
about lenovo what i wanted to um kind of highlight was these last four
14:56
so increasing the affordable housing supply is not directly under the control of your coc
15:02
but it may be um part of the role of some of your members some of you on the
15:07
phone you know on the call right now so increasing affordable housing supply is a new question this year
15:14
about what was done to decrease zoning barriers things like that what you're doing to work with
15:21
entities in your state to increase the housing supply so i would expect more and more emphasis
15:27
on that so probably be a couple points this year but i just wanted to plant that seed and everyone's head we're
15:32
gonna need to think to make sure we're at the right tables and be able to talk to that to again continue to have you be
15:38
a strong applicant so that you can continue to score well and get money into the balance of state
15:45
new hampshire and melanie to give some reassurance to the group um
15:50
the so all three continuums of care actually sit on the council for housing stability
15:55
the statewide council in addressing the lack of affordable housing is a huge
16:00
part of that work um and there are a lot of other continuum of care members who
16:06
participate in our work groups in our um subcommittee so if you
16:11
aren't actively involved and you'd like to be let me know i can get you connected with one of those work groups but that work is happening across the
16:18
state it's slow and we don't have enough yet but there's work being done to address it so if you want more information let
16:25
me know yeah um great um some places where they
16:30
increased or decreased points again it kind of tells you where their policy priorities are
16:36
um there's a list here i'm not going to read it to you we're still waiting on the details of what the question changes
16:42
are um if something had decreased points it doesn't mean it's not so important to
16:47
them they're just putting their emphasis somewhere else so hud still does want to see that families are not separated they just um
16:55
sometimes they put that as a priority question and then as soon as enough people are saying yes to it
17:00
they'll decrease points and emphasize somewhere else so it's not to undo the good work that you've done um in
17:07
discharge planning and families it's just we're not gonna get we're not gonna continue to get points
17:12
for your past good work we're gonna need new future good work so we're just gonna have to keep you know
17:18
um taking lots of credit for all the work that you do throughout the year so i just wanted to highlight that
17:26
um [Music] let's see
17:32
scanning through the stuff that is kind of the biggest you can see here the new new questions
17:38
um i mark with the bold um parentheses new uh the dating violence um sexual assault
17:45
stalking dv there will be different questions that we have to answer this year if we want
17:50
tv bonus funds we're waiting for those details so there still will be questions but
17:55
they hinted in what has been published that they'll be a little bit different um training people on the needs of lgbt
18:04
um at individual level agency and coc level around policy and compliance that's a
18:11
new emphasis it's always been there but not really talking about the compliance piece of it
18:17
of what the coc does if someone isn't is discriminating or doesn't have policies that are following
18:23
the coc policies um this question here we might need some
18:28
you know group thing from local um smaller local um efforts that are going on hud has talked
18:35
about um ensuring that you're working with your state to not criminalize
18:40
homelessness like not make it illegal to sleep out um you know be in a public park that type of thing this year they
18:47
took it a step further they want to know not only what you're doing to prevent um policies from doing
18:53
that but they want to know if you have that policy now or policy that criminalizes homelessness what are you doing to
18:59
reverse it so that we just might need some like you know feedback if there's something in one particular county again
19:05
waiting on the details of that question um a big new emphasis on soar which
19:11
again i think you're really strong in so we'll just need to talk about that around certifications and um at the
19:17
project and coc wide level uh non-congregate shelter here again you
19:22
guys have been living this it's really thinking about um
19:28
uh are you ready to put non-congregate in in the future if you need it what are the lessons learned from coven
19:34
um a lot of the rest of this oh this is that zoning question i was telling you about what are we doing to reduce the
19:40
regulatory barriers to affordable housing right all of our wishes and dreams
19:45
but like melissa said you guys are working on that at the statewide level and i think the rest of this um
19:53
oh this is really exciting i don't know melissa and christy if you found this yet so every year uh you do really well in
20:00
your permanent supportive housing you have 96 of people who either stay or leave for a permanent housing place and
20:07
we've lost points on that question because you can't do much better like if you're already at 96 or 98 to increase
20:14
by a full percentage point is really tough so this year hud set some criteria so
20:20
like for successful exits to permanent housing if you're already at i think it was 96 you're going to get points even
20:27
if it didn't go up any higher so i think that will really help new hampshire because you already have really high
20:32
like responses and good data but you were kind of getting penalized because you couldn't do any
20:37
better than 90s than 90 percentages in some of the categories so i think this
20:43
will help over the long term and you can see i was super excited about it because i was been waiting for this for years
20:50
um we talked about leveraging already um still big emphasis on including
20:56
people with lived experience at all levels of the process so making sure the voices of the people that are gonna be
21:03
you know impacted mostly by these programs are having a hand in designing those and giving feedback to those of us
21:09
working within the system and i think that is all i would highlight there the rest of it is more
21:16
like things for christy um melissa and i to watch out for as we like get those detailed questions
21:23
uh okay i'm gonna pause there before we kind of maybe pivot a little bit into project applications any questions on
21:30
the content [Music] melissa do you want me to go over these
21:36
project things or wait until we do the scoring uh why don't so i think we'll shift our agenda just a little bit so we can keep
21:42
flowing through so if you do this part then chrissy can talk about the scoring and then we'll have mandy bring up the
21:48
the end um i think that would be helpful and then at the very end i will share our um tentative timeline with the whole
21:55
group perfect yep so like i talked about there's bonus funds there's dv bonus
22:00
funds you can also continue to expand projects which means if you have a current project and you want to make it
22:06
a little bigger serve more people add new housing units whatever the bigger part is um hud is allowing that
22:13
again this year i know your yhtp community don't worry about this bullet you're not in renewal yet this is going
22:19
to apply to you in a couple years so just wanted to highlight there are new funds um
22:25
all new projects all renewal projects have a scoring tool process that christy can talk about more
22:32
but this is the calculation like melissa said hud hasn't published what these numbers actually are yet so we're kind
22:38
of guessing we're doing our best hub math without their publication to figure out how much new money is out there for
22:44
you to apply for okay i'm just going to scroll to make sure there's nothing else i think the
22:49
rest of it is going to be available to you for details if you're actually
22:54
going after [Music] some money i think you'll want to read more about this bonus funds you'll want
23:01
to read more about i'm going to scroll to the bottom there's a chart that's much easier to read
23:06
there's a chart here about what bonus money can be used for and what db bonus money can be used for
23:12
so as this publishes if you're doing a new project the latter half of this document is good for you to review
23:19
as you go forward and the tools that christie's gonna go over are really based on what hud um
23:26
put his eligible activities and what you incentivize as a local coc
23:31
so i'm gonna stop that share again that document will go out for melissa when everything goes out
23:37
and i think i'm going to pass it to christy to talk about tools
23:43
good morning everyone um just before i jump into the tools for
23:48
all of you sub recipient agencies who are on this call you were sent out last year's um project
23:55
application from the fy 2021 nopo to review by friday
24:00
um because we do not have access to the fy 2022 project applications as of yet
24:06
but i don't anticipate any big changes for renewals um
24:12
and lastly i will be sending out match templates hopefully by the end of today for all of you to put those together
24:19
um in regards i'm gonna share my screen remember how to do this in regards to the ranking and scoring
24:28
tools we made a couple of changes
24:33
to the ranking and scoring tools both for new projects and for renewal projects
24:39
this year there were two questions added specifically around equity
24:47
if you can remember last year we sent out a supplemental questionnaire tool which had numerous questions on it from
24:54
an equity perspective last year we only included four
25:00
questions you can see on the screen it's questions 18 to 21 that were scored on
25:07
this year we are proposing adding two more questions um question 22 does your
25:13
agency have a process for receiving and incorporating feedback from persons with lived experience
25:20
and then has your agency reviewed participant outcomes in your current projects with an equity lens
25:26
the reason we are proposing adding these questions is because the specific hud policy priorities within the nofo
25:34
in regards to the first question has your agency review participant outcomes
25:40
without equity lens this is specifically cited in the nofo on page 72
25:46
having the coc address racial disparities in the provision of outcomes of
25:51
homelessness assistance and taking steps to address those disparities um
25:57
and also looking at in the review of project capacity and
26:02
rank projects are rated and ranked based on the degree to which their project has
26:08
identified any barriers to participation faced by people of different races
26:13
ethnicities and particularly those who are over represented in the local homelessness population and how you can
26:20
step to eliminate those barriers one of the other big things that i want to point out as well is that one of the
26:27
things that we look at when we do on-site monitoring of sub-recipient agencies
26:32
is participant satisfaction surveys as well on
26:41
so that's one of the questions we're looking at and then the second question is does your agency i flip them i'm
26:48
sorry does your agency have process for reviewing and receiving and incorporating feedback from persons with
26:53
lived experiences this is another one of pods big policy priorities that i know we've been
26:59
talking about um for the last couple of years the balance of state continuum of care
27:04
participated in some ta around incorporating people with lived experience um and hud is really pushing for cocs to
27:12
include people with lived experience and the planning processes um and we're also looking at ensuring
27:20
that we're involving people who have lived experience in sub-recipient agencies projects
27:26
service delivery and decision-making so how sub-recipient agencies are
27:31
routinely gathering feedback from people experiencing homelessness and
27:37
looking at those who have received assistance from coc or even esg programs
27:43
on their experience receiving assistance and those steps that projects are taking to address challenges raised by those
27:48
people um and making sure that we're involving them in these processes and our feedback
27:54
loop and changes that are needed for coc projects
28:00
so we will send out both of those questions were added to the new project scoring tool the renewal project
28:07
scoring tool and new this year is the coordinate entry project scoring tool um so those
28:14
two questions were added to both of the tools
28:22
we removed points from the balance of state
28:29
questions where how many meetings have you attended in order to accommodate those two
28:35
questions so we removed two points from coc participation and added them one
28:40
point each for each of those equity questions to the root scoring tools
28:47
so i will pause there see if anyone has any questions
28:55
and this will be one of those items that we send out the electronic vote on so we want you to think about it we'll send it
29:02
out for you to look at and then there will be a survey monkey vote for you to vote on adding these questions or not
29:10
and christy can you stop sharing your screen so we can see yes thank you
29:17
and we will be sending out drafts of all three of the scoring tools for you to review once these are finalized because
29:25
i know ellen asks this question once the tools are either approved or rejected
29:30
once they're finally approved i can begin to work on the scoring of renewal project applications
29:48
i'm just finally emphasizing out of these two questions really looking at what hud was focusing on for
29:54
policy priorities from the noble this year yeah and it's important like you'll hear
30:00
us say a lot like hud wants hud wants but we do try and be very cautious or
30:05
you know at least when i work with communities about hud wants it and its value added i think is the second part
30:11
of the question right like it has to add value for new hampshire also so i think um that you'll find that
30:17
balance there's some things hud has asked for we're like nope that does not make sense for a rural
30:22
state right like um so just wanted to add that is we get very points and narrative focus uh do you know that the
30:29
larger system is as important because that's what happens every day you know i've i've warned people
30:35
throughout the year that when it's nobo time we are very um point driven but it
30:41
i try to remember to say the same thing melanie that it comes back to um improving our system and the people
30:47
we're trying to serve um but getting more points on this competition allows us to serve more people so
30:53
um we do get i do anyway i get tunnel vision this time of year when it's um
30:59
especially right now with such a tight time frame so um feel free to call me on it if you think i'm just chasing points and don't
31:06
care about the system i promise i do it just um i might not say it as much as i should this time of year
31:14
so while we're talking regular no-fo i just realized i wrote no on my
31:20
timeline let me fix that i will share our timeline it is in draft form because
31:27
some of it we can't do until hud gives us certain things so you'll see um
31:33
this time frame is unreasonable and we acknowledge that and we apologize for it and um we thank you for your patience
31:40
with it so we anticipate releasing our rfp by this
31:46
friday um knowing that our exact dollar amounts
31:52
for bonus funding may not actually be available yet so
31:57
if we don't have that dollar amount the rfp will say anticipated approximate and it'll be
32:04
based on that formula that was on melanie's summary where it showed five percent of and then 10 of a different
32:11
number um once we do have the final dollar amounts
32:17
we will edit it and we republish it for everyone to see the exact dollar amount but we want people to have as much time
32:23
as possible realizing that we are not able to give you very much time at all
32:29
um so my dates are all out of order here this
32:36
is an old one too this should come off sorry about that um so friday we we
32:41
anticipate releasing the rfp um the two that are highlighted
32:47
we need to change we'll change those dates once christie's able to send the actual renewal project
32:54
applications out for review um we have tentative deadlines that christie already described she sent out
33:00
last year's documents to everybody yesterday with feedback requested by friday
33:05
um but if something dramatic changes we will have to re-send those to everyone
33:11
so that we can look at them so um that part will change
33:17
um new project applications will be due to me they'll come to me directly
33:24
by monday august 29th so we realize that we're giving you i'm trying to look at my calendar
33:30
about two and a half weeks to do a new project application we understand that that is a really really challenging
33:38
deadline um and we really can't do anything about that so
33:45
if there are ways we can help you we will knowing that it's a competition we can't
33:50
do your project application for you um our ranking committee meeting is already
33:56
scheduled for friday september 2nd um i did reach out to the executive
34:02
committee to see if anyone would like to be a part of the ranking committee and i think i've received one response so far
34:09
um at this point i'm i'm looking for anyone to be a part of our ranking committee um
34:16
so please let me know you cannot be on the ranking committee if your agency is submitting a new
34:23
project application renewals are fine because the ranking committee does not review the renewals um its renewals are
34:30
all based on data but if your agency is submitting a new product application you cannot be reviewing the new project
34:37
applications um so
34:42
we did give ourselves a tiny bit of a buffer here two days we like to try and give us a little bit of extra
34:48
space this year we can't give ourselves as much as usual um so the ranking committee will meet on
34:53
friday september 7th we will notify everyone who applied about the status of
34:59
their applications appeals will be due to vhs in writing two days after that
35:06
and then uh july i'm in the wrong month
35:11
whatever day of the week september 12th is we will publish our final project listing so that's after the appeals have
35:17
been submitted if any uh section for 12 will publish the final project listing
35:22
um we technically have until the 15th to do all of that but we again like to give
35:27
ourselves a tiny bit of a buffer um and then we
35:33
anticipate posting our final complete coc application for review on september
35:39
26th with comments due back to bhs by
35:44
september 28th at 3 pm um that way if
35:50
if there are no major concerns complaints issues
35:56
we can submit that afternoon um
36:01
with the with a buffer of about a day and a half so um that is that is our target timeline
36:08
for this year it is going to be very challenging and um
36:15
i'm going to stop sharing this i will send this out for everyone once i've cleaned up the highlighted yellow section
36:20
i will try to make our communications about novo as clear as possible i think
36:25
in my subject line i will put nobo first and then what i'm requesting so that you
36:31
can see right away that i am sending nobo communication um any novo communication that is coming
36:37
out will be time sensitive um and again i'm not trying to
36:44
i'm not trying to be unreasonable in that it's it's the reality of our time frame this year so again i apologize in
36:51
advance and i thank you in advance for your understanding
36:57
felony any other regular coc high level stuff before i let mandy talk a little bit about the supplemental nobo
37:04
um the only thing i would say if there's new folks here folks that have been through
37:10
this with us in the past yes we won't be publishing the rfp until friday but you know now right the
37:17
project types that are being allowed you can kind of guess from last year the money probably is going to be about the
37:23
same at least for bonus so if you have time before friday not then anyone probably is a lot but if
37:29
you have time it's okay to start thinking about your project design now don't you don't have to wait till friday for this document to come out to tell
37:35
you it could be psh it could be rapid it could be right like the rules haven't changed that much this
37:41
year we just don't know what the numbers are yet and hud's doing a webinar thursday so
37:47
hopefully that means the materials will be out they don't want to talk to the whole country without publishing materials but we'll see
37:53
um so just if you're thinking about a project you know look at last year's rfp look at you know read the rule about
37:59
what's allowed you can get a jump on it if you have time in the next three days before that comes out so just that's the
38:06
other reason we wanted to talk about it today okay so
38:12
while this is happening we also have the supplemental
38:18
notice of funding opportunity that came out for rural and unsheltered homelessness we have 72 days left on
38:25
that one um compared to the 52 days we have for the regular competition um
38:31
we are trying to keep our time frames aligned for the ease of
38:39
um just for all of us i guess for for managing uh different deadlines so
38:45
as part of the rfp that comes out there will be a separate document that explains the
38:52
project types that are allowed under the supplemental competition there will be
38:57
tools that come out with that as well and mandy is going to talk a little bit about hud's priorities on those items
39:05
um what's eligible and then um we will send more information out on
39:12
friday as well so mandy go ahead get screen sharing so in the meantime i just want to say if
39:19
you're brand new to this process well you should be happy happy to have you okay awesome happy to
39:25
have you here and we fully recognize that this may seem like a different language like please don't be
39:31
intimidated by that we are here for you we want to make this as accessible as possible and we want to bring people to
39:36
the table so with that said share my screen here
39:45
so we did review kind of an overview uh the last balance of state meetings so i did kind of a hybrid for those that are
39:51
newer to this and those that this is old hat for you all you've done this million times i'll quickly go through this
40:00
so just as a reminder this nofo is broken out into two different funding opportunities those
40:06
for unsheltered homelessness and those focusing on rural regions
40:13
there are two different funding buckets underneath that the unsheltered maximum and the rural maximum
40:20
and again this will all be coming out in these documents that will be released this week
40:28
so regardless of the unsheltered or the rural category
40:33
that you're looking to apply for all project types are the same so supportive services only permanent
40:40
supportive housing rapid rehousing or transitional housing rapid rehousing combination
40:46
so some of these are in the regular nofo you familiar with them all but i did
40:52
include at the end of this presentation a full list of them with reference
40:57
documents for those that are newer to this and are looking for more information about what is included in
41:04
each but i did want to just highlight the supportive services only that is
41:09
included in this s nofo snowfo as we're calling it
41:15
so coordinated entry uh that is one we've seen in the regular nofo that helps us administer our coordinated
41:22
entry process there's street outreach sso supportive services only which is pretty
41:28
straightforward that's a street outreach project and then the standalone project this is
41:34
for individuals and families who have experienced homelessness in the last six
41:39
months but who are now residing in permanent housing that is not coc or
41:44
sorry psh or rapid rehousing or are currently experiencing homelessness
41:50
so if you think about the number of resources that have come through housing choice vouchers or other funding streams
41:57
that can do things like rental assistance but may not come with those supportive services that case management to help
42:03
support that project this is where that sso standalone project could fit in
42:12
hud has also provided other examples about what this standalone sso project could look like things like housing
42:18
navigation for people experiencing homelessness drop-in centers that provide supportive services family
42:24
unification services to reunite people experiencing homelessness with their families
42:30
so the sso category provides a lot of opportunities to really boost up these service
42:38
components to a lot of the housing and rental assistance that we've seen coming out over the last couple years
42:47
so with that said i want to just focus on a couple differences within the two buckets that we're talking about
42:53
so unsheltered that set aside all projects must focus only on category
43:01
one of the definition of homelessness or four so just as a reminder what does that
43:08
mean so category one is the not fit for human habitation
43:13
anyone residing in emergency shelter or hotel motel paid for by third party
43:19
or anyone that is exiting in an institution where they have entered as experiencing
43:25
homelessness and exited within 90 days
43:30
category 4 db specific so any individual or family who is fleeing or attempting
43:36
to flee domestic violence has no other residence and lacks the resources or supports to obtain other current housing
43:48
the unsheltered can be served anywhere within the balance of state geography
43:54
in contrast to that rural the hud has defined what rural means for
44:00
the balance of state continuum so under the formula they gave us
44:05
the following counties are eligible for the no-fo services
44:11
so not that your agency has to be based in these counties but in order to have a project approved these services or the
44:18
project type that is administered must take place in these counties so bill knapp carol cheshire
44:25
coast grafton merrimack and sullivan
44:31
unlike the unsheltered definitions this project type you can serve any of
44:37
the definition of homelessness so category one two or four
44:43
so category three is specific it's very uh focused on unaccompanied youth and
44:48
other youth specific uh criteria that must be approved by hud we do not have
44:55
that approval by hood so at this point uh we cannot apply anyone to category
45:01
three so very important in that and as part of the supplemental
45:06
materials we will be sending out we will include hud's definition of homelessness and the record-keeping requirements
45:13
so we all are on the same page with what is included in that homeless definition
45:20
there are also new eligible costs on the rural side so again only in those
45:26
specific regions hud has allowed additional costs over and above what
45:31
traditionally is seen in this no full process because of the lack of infrastructure
45:37
and resources in these communities so some examples that you'll see coming out
45:42
in the document are things like emergency food and clothing capacity building for your agencies
45:48
up to six months of rent or utility arrears after two months of non-payment
45:54
emergency lodging hotel motel etc etc a lot of different components that are
46:00
not traditionally seen
46:06
so on the unsheltered side we will be graded if you will by hud as a
46:12
coc so no the unsheltered side is extremely competitive we are a small
46:19
state with not a lot of folks experiencing unsheltered homelessness relative to communities like new york
46:26
city and los angeles you know and some of the texas communities
46:32
so smaller communities smaller cocs are going to be extremely competitive in
46:38
this so all of this is a maybe on the unsheltered side but what's very important to know is
46:44
that on the rural side hud is grading if you will projects
46:50
so the individual projects applications that are submitted will be reviewed on a
46:55
hundred point scale importantly uh these are related you know this is not siloing uh the rural
47:03
and the unsheltered homelessness separately so fifty percent of your score in your project application is our
47:10
overall coc score followed by the project ranking within
47:16
the coc and then serving structurally disadvantaged areas so hud has defined this
47:23
and we'll be noting this in the priority tool i'll be talking about in just a moment
47:32
all right so requirements of all projects regardless of which bucket you're
47:37
applying for housing first you know we talk about this a lot but hud has come back very
47:43
strong in this snowfall that we are to be practicing housing first
47:48
fidelity to the model not just checking a box we know homelessness ends uh
47:53
homelessness is ended by housing and that is first and foremost our focus not requiring services or any preconditions
48:01
on that housing so you're going to see that a lot in our ranking tools because it is a high priority
48:07
and requirement the other thing that is important to
48:13
note for all applicants is that hud is assessing our coc response to
48:20
identifying sheltering and housing individuals and families experiencing homelessness with severe service needs
48:29
so we as a continuum will be attaching a plan
48:34
to our application to show the efforts that are being done and how they will contribute on going to
48:41
our response so when we started talking about this when we released this information we
48:47
were kind of flooded by you all saying our region's doing this we're already
48:52
working on this plan so for us it made sense rather than starting from the ground and putting
48:58
together a plan to source you all so we will be attending your local community meetings
49:05
to talk to you about what's already going on uh we know hud's priorities and we know
49:12
where they're looking for us to input information you can see here across the screen
49:18
but it just makes sense to utilize the expertise in our continuum to build
49:25
a comprehensive plan that is actually happening right so know that over the
49:30
next couple months we do have some time to build this thankfully on our end um
49:36
we will be reaching out to you all for that we will be gathering information and then submitting a plan to you all
49:42
for discussion about what is missing what else is needed etc
49:53
so with all of that in mind we are discussing how to prioritize
49:59
prioritize these projects so i want to echo christy and
50:05
melissa and melanie's comments about the scoring and the points again it's
50:11
the right thing to do however if we don't if we are not competitive as a coc we can't be
50:18
competitive for our projects and therefore we will not get the funding to support the projects to serve our folks
50:24
so in light of everything we just talked about hud's priorities
50:30
hearing from you all about what's missing in your communities our proposal for a prioritization of the
50:37
funding for this nofo is to have the highest ranking projects be
50:44
supportive services only permanent supportive housing followed by rapid rehousing and the transitional
50:51
rapid rehousing combination project so we this will be a vote that comes out
50:57
to you all after the meeting so please keep this in mind um and if we have time at the end maybe
51:04
we can open it up for discussions of any thoughts about that
51:11
so we will also have a scoring tool as chrissy just mentioned and went through
51:16
we want to mirror this process as much as possible with the regular nofo
51:21
because they're both coc funds they should talk to each other and everything
51:27
that melanie mentioned as priorities in that nofo are also priorities in this
51:32
nofo so in effort to not be confusing we want to keep it as consistent as possible that
51:39
way we as a ranking committee can be objective in these project review and applications and you know that we're
51:45
speaking the same language the only difference on the scoring tool
51:50
for this nofo will be the structurally disadvantaged regions you
51:58
will get two points and the plan for identifying housing or sheltering
52:05
individuals or families experiencing homelessness with severe service needs
52:11
that plan you will get up to five points so again those are requirements that hud
52:16
will be scoring us on so including it in the ranking
52:21
allows us to be the most competitive and choose projects that will get us
52:27
the highest ranking that we can with fingers crossed that we get the flipping
52:33
and we will be requiring a vote from you all on that as well
52:39
so that's all i have on the presentation
52:44
stop sharing so that was a lot of information we just
52:52
gave to all of you does anyone have any questions about what mandy just shared
52:58
and if you i'll put out there you can send us your questions after the fact too this is not the last time you get to
53:04
ask your questions um as i noted in the chat we can't talk about individual project applications we
53:11
do have to treat it um as a competition and maintain that some level of um
53:19
i don't know what the right word is confidentiality is not the right word but integrity to the competition but as far as like
53:25
priorities process um eligible activities
53:35
reactions so i thought ellen has a question in the chat about the timeline
53:42
so we are having the same timeline for the supplemental nofo on the project
53:48
application and all of the the nuts and bolts of the application process we are
53:54
giving additional time on the plan so that will be a longer process because of the priority hud is placed on that that
54:02
is 50 of our overall score so taking the time to really invest in that
54:07
again will make us the most competitive we can and we recognize this is a tight
54:13
turnaround um but in order to not double your admin to have you go to two
54:18
separate meetings for two separate no phones we just thought it was the most
54:23
the only way really to move forward we're also hearing staffing capacity is challenging so we're trying to meet
54:30
meet you where where we can uh with these tight timelines ellen there may be a little bit more
54:36
time for like um after we get through the review of the
54:43
project applications to clean it up and like you know make it pretty for for hud
54:50
um but we on top of the project priority listing this is for
54:56
the supplemental new uh competition we have to do a project priority list like we do for the regular no vote we have to
55:03
do a coc application which is a set of questions like we do for the regular nofo and on top of that we have to do a
55:09
15-page plan addressing unsheltered homelessness um so it's
55:16
it adds like an extra component that we don't normally have
55:21
um so we're some of it really is our capacity as well to to manage all of it
55:28
um and i think we acknowledge that
55:33
project applications may not be the strongest we've ever seen because we're not giving you enough time to do it
55:42
by investing in the plan our hope is that that score that 50 of your project
55:48
score will help you in get above other project types and other continuums if that makes sense
55:56
one other question that that standalone um thing that you could do in the
56:02
supplemental noco so those people would already be housed right it's providing supportive services to people who have
56:08
been housed in the last six months i think it said but then they wouldn't really be fitting that definition of
56:15
category one or category four so it could be persons experiencing
56:20
homelessness or up to six months um have been permanently housed not in a
56:26
permanent supportive housing or rapid rehousing so really we'd be looking for that on the rural side
56:32
um that that opens it up to that category to homeless as well
56:38
yeah and to clarify hud puts a lot of language in these nofos but they want people in literal
56:44
homelessness moving out of it so while they give us the world sometimes about what you can do the focus really would
56:51
be on what moving people out and then maybe following up with them so if you're going to design something think about
56:57
the front end versus the follow-on services that we know is a huge gap so
57:03
and final life go ahead ellen and then i see chris canada if we have questions about the special
57:10
nofo the extra no vote is our mandy are you the person who's the person we would ask about a particular project we want
57:16
to submit so i would send all communication to me and i will i will be
57:22
um directing traffic here just for ease of communication that way
57:28
you only have to remember one person um and i will put it out there
57:34
over the next two weeks if you email me you will get an out of office email
57:39
response um i am only working nopo i am taking vacation from the rest of my job i don't
57:46
know how that works um but my kids don't have child care for the next three weeks so i
57:51
i'm i'm multitasking um so what you may see is an out of office response and then an
57:58
email from me later in the day than usual but i i will be checking it um throughout the
58:04
work days and craig you had a question i just wanted to clarify uh so mandy the
58:09
rural has the most money but it's limited geographically to the six
58:16
counties and it is more inclusive of the definitions of
58:21
homelessness that we can serve with it and we're only going against other rural
58:27
communities so the pool that we're against is smaller as well in terms of
58:32
competition okay thank you
58:48
so tony i saw your question about the um the webinar i can forward the email from
58:55
the snaps program office but the best way to stay up to date with
59:00
any of the hud um webinars that come out is to sign up directly for their
59:06
their list serve so that you get the hud exchange emails and the snaps program
59:12
information emails um the webinar information did come from the snaps
59:18
email so i will forward that to everyone um i don't see it on the hud exchange yet
59:25
but the hud exchange has been a little bit slow to catch up this year
59:31
so when i when i go there i often am finding fy21 documents not the 22 but
59:37
um i do strongly encourage you to sign up for those snaps office emails
59:46
so we have one more minute scheduled for today any oh now it's at now we're 10 o'clock so
59:52
um what i'll say is we will send as much information out as we can on friday
59:57
as hud updates information we will send that out as well um i do plan to keep as of today anyway
1:00:05
i do plan to keep our september coc meetings scheduled just in case there are things that we need to address with
1:00:12
everyone there um if the time is getting tight and we don't
1:00:19
have time to do the meeting we'll communicate that out to everyone um
1:00:25
i think i think that's all i have for today i have a list of the voting items we'll be
1:00:30
sending out to everyone um i will do my best to really make it clear when i'm sending nobo
1:00:37
communication out um again if anyone's interested in being part of our
1:00:44
review team please email me um
1:00:50
and i think that's it for today i know that was a lot please don't hesitate to reach out with questions um
1:00:57
we are here for you the best as we can be there may be some hysterical laughter on this side as we
1:01:04
you know process the time frame it's better than crying so um
1:01:09
to stay with us and we'll get through all right thanks everyone we'll post the recording soon as well