FY17 HUD Continuum of Care Project Scores, Rankings and Appeal Results

Background
The Lake County Coalition for the Homeless began the application process for HUD FY17 funding with the approval of Funding Policies by the Coalition Board on April 19, 2017. These policies, available at www.lakecountyhomeless.org, were developed over six months with the guidance of a HUD Technical Assistance provider. In accordance with these policies, the Strategic Planning and System Performance (SPSP) Committee completed a system needs assessment, which served as the foundation for their recommended allocation plan and ranking guidance. The allocation plan, available on the website, was approved by the Coalition Board on May 2, 2017. The Project Performance and Monitoring (PPM) Committee developed the local application forms and scoring tools. The Funding Work Group (FWG) was created by the SPSP and PPM Committees to fulfill the functions associated with completing the application for FY17 HUD Continuum of Care funds as outlined in Funding Policies.

HUD will allow the Lake County Continuum of Care to apply for up to $2,263,527. The Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) dictates that $1,952,032 of project funding be ranked in Tier 1 and $249,196 ranked in Tier 2. Projects in Tier 2 are at higher risk of not receiving funding as they will compete with projects across the country.

Using the application tools provided by the PPM Committee, the FWG met and reviewed each project application. The group used consensus scoring where all group members agreed on each question’s score. Each applicant will receive their score via email. The percentage of available points received is listed in the chart on page 2. Additionally, Lake County will apply for the $62,299 in available funding for the planning grant. As this grant is sized by HUD through the NOFA and not ranked, the FWG did not consider the planning grant in the following recommendations.

Allocation Plan
The allocation plan identified the following system gaps as a priority for this funding round to be filled in the order listed:

  1. 7 beds of permanent supportive housing (PSH) for chronically homeless individuals. This gap to be filled with an estimated $121,000 of annual CoC funding.
  2. 73 units of rapid rehousing (RRH) to fill the need for medium acuity households identified through coordinated entry. The estimated cost to fill this gap with rapid rehousing is $1.5 million annually.

Through a letter of interest process, projects opted to add units to existing PSH in exchange for points on the application. Sixteen units were added through this process, exceeding the goal of seven units. As a result, the SPSP committee agreed that new and bonus funding will be allocated to RRH to begin to fill the significant system gap.
The allocation plan provided the following ranking guidance:

1. Four new projects that were awarded funding in the FY2016 funding round do not yet have contracts and therefore will be difficult to score and rank in the current funding round.

  • Catholic Charities’ Rapid Rehousing and Thresholds’ Permanent Supportive Housing will be scored and ranked based on the performance of their other contracts of the same project type.
  • PADS’ Coordinated Entry and the Lake County Residential Development Corporation’s Victoria Veterans Place will be ranked in Tier 1 to protect the investment until there is enough information to score them as a renewal.
    The following project rankings are consistent with the allocation plan.

2. Infrastructure grants are critical for measuring system performance, planning as a system, and making the delivery of homeless assistance more open, inclusive and transparent.

The following project rankings are consistent with the allocation plan.

Project Rankings
The FWG scored each project together, with each member confirming each project score. The projects rankings are based on the percentage of available points they scored, giving preference to renewal projects over new projects.

Projects in Tier 2 have a higher risk of not receiving funding. By prioritizing renewals over new projects, the FWG eliminated risk to existing housing units. The CTI-RP project is made up of three contracts which are scored together. When determining the order of the contracts the FWG considered how projects would score when being selected by HUD and history of unspent funds in previous contracts.

Every applicant will receive their full scores via email. Agencies have the right to appeal the decisions of the Funding Work Group to the Appeals Work Group by submitting a letter outlining the basis for their appeal by email to Brenda O'Connell by August 3, 2017. As outlined in the Funding Policies, agency appeals are “limited to technical errors on application scoring.” The results of appeals will be communicated via email and posted on the website.

Appeal Results

 

Reference Documents and More Information

  1. Lake County's Funding Policies 
  2. FY2017 Allocation Plan.
  3. HUD FY2017 CoC Program Registration Notice
  4. HUD CoC Regulations

If you have additional questions, please contact Brenda O’Connell, Continuum of Care Program Coordinator at 847-377-2331.