WASHINGTON – U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro today 
awarded $1.6 billion in grants to provide funding to 6,400 local homeless housing and service programs across the U.S., Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The Tier 1 Continuum of Care (CoC) grants declared today support the Obama Administration’s efforts to end homelessness by providing critically needed housing and support services to individuals and families experiencing homelessness. HUD will award approximately $300 million in “Tier 2 grants” in the spring to support hundreds more local programs.
HUD estimates there were 564,708 persons experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2015. Since 2010 local communities around the country reported a declined by more than 72,000 persons, an 11 percent reduction. In addition, veteran homelessness fell by 36 percent, chronic homelessness declined 22 percent and between 2010 and January 2015, family homelessness declined by 19 percent, while the estimated number of unaccompanied homeless youth and children was 36,097.
Across the nation, local homelessness planning agencies called ‘Continuums of Care’ recently organized volunteers to help count the number of persons located in emergency shelters, transitional housing programs and living unsheltered on the streets. Continuums of Care will report these one-night ‘point-in-time counts’ later in the year and will form the basis of HUD’s 2016 national homeless estimate.
