Friday news roundup 4/11/14

This week HUD announced the award of nearly $1.6 billion in grants to renew support for 7,100 local homeless housing and service programs across the United States, Puerto Rico, Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands. HUD will award additional grant funding to support hundreds of other local programs in the coming weeks. The funding was awarded under HUD’s Continuum of Care (CoC) program competition for fiscal year (FY) 2013.

Due to funding shortages, CoCs were required to prioritize homeless projects into two tiers to communicate to HUD which projects were of the highest priority for the FY 2013 funding process. The Tier 1 awards announced this week represent annual renewal amounts for existing programs, minus 5 percent. The grants were also reduced in part due to last year’s automatic across-the-board budget cuts under sequestration.

Also provided are a press release describing the 2013 grants, an interactive map showing award amounts by state, and a 436-page document showing amounts awarded to individual local programs. HUD plans to issue a second award announcement later in the year for all new (Tier 1 and Tier 2) and remaining renewal (Tier 2) projects. In other news:

TheHUDdle: Individuals living with HIV/AIDS fight back against housing discrimination

Off the Charts: Obama plan to raise rents on rural poor is the wrong way to save money

Planetizen: Housing is the key to family-friendly cities

Rooflines: Our four largest low-income housing assistance programs continue to replicate patterns of poverty concentration and segregation in the segregated metropolitan areas where most units are located

Washington Post: The most important fact we rarely admit in talking about segregation and poverty