Community Priorities and Funding Strategies
The CoC's overall priority is to make homelessness brief, rare and non-recurring. We seek to ensure adequate funding for programs that are effective in functionally ending homelessness and providing everyone with the opportunity for safe, decent, and affordable housing options. We work to leverage community resources with State and Federal funding and ensure a region-wide approach to service delivery.
The CoC is a collaborative of community partners working to create cost-effective interventions that enhance system-wide performance. Activities include stabilizing families to reduce the length of time families/individuals experience homelessness, fostering increases to household income, obtaining needed benefits, increasing successful housing placements, and supporting housing retention.
All CoC members must adhere to the written policies and by-laws approved by the CoC Board of Directors, including the CoC's Code of Conduct and PII policies. The CoC members funded through CoC collaborative application efforts must implement "Housing First" as the model to housing provision and service delivery. Funded partners must actively work to reduce barriers to services and housing. We prioritize services to those who are the most vulnerable and least likely to access services. The homeless populations we serve have varied needs and increased barriers to housing and include veterans, chronically homeless, unaccompanied youth, families, LGBTQIA, victims of domestic violence, and criminal histories.
CURRENT FUNDING SOURCES
Annual Emergency Solutions Grant
The NC Department of Health and Human Services - Division of Aging and Adult Services is the grantee of NC Emergency Solutions Grant funding. Each Continuum of Care is eligible to apply for their fair share allocation of these funds. The ESG grant funds are available for Emergency Shelter Operations, Emergency Shelter Services, Street Outreach, Rapid Re-Housing Financial Assistance, Rapid Re-Housing Services, Homelessness Prevention and Homeless Management Information Systems.
HUD Continuum of Care Grant Competition
Each year, HUD announces their Notice of Funding Availability for the Continuum of Care grant competition. The CoC Grant is a nationally competitive process, funding designated homeless continuums of care for Transitional Housing, Permanent Supportive Housing, Rapid Re-Housing, HMIS, Coordinated Entry, and CoC Planning activities. The Continuum of Care is responsible for review of all new and renewal project applications and scoring them according to performance and alignment with community priorities and HUD goals .
Organizations interested in applying for new Continuum of Care funds must participate as a COC member, have attended at least the minimum number of monthly meetings per the by-laws, and commit to standards of the CoC.