The FY 2016 CoC Program Competition is Now Open

Submission Deadline: Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at 7:59:59 PM EDT

• The FY 2016 CoC Program Competition is administered under the CoC Program interim rule (24 CFR part 578) and covers the application and award process for the FY 2016 CoC Program funds.
• The electronic application, e-snaps, is not yet available. HUD strongly encourages CoCs, Collaborative Applicants, project applicants, and stakeholders to use the time before e-snaps opens to:

• Carefully and thoroughly read the FY 2016 CoC Program Competition NOFA to clearly understand what has changed from last year; and
• Begin to plan local competitions based on the information, new and changed, from the previous competition, provided in the FY 2016 CoC Program Competition NOFA.

• An announcement will be made on the FY 2016 CoC Program Competition: Funding Availability page on the HUD Exchange and via listserv message when the e-snaps is available. For your planning purposes, we anticipate this will occur sometime after July 6, 2016.
• HUD will issue a Preliminary Annual Renewal Demand (ARD) Report that includes each CoC’s Preliminary Pro Rata Need (PPRN) and ARD amounts no earlier than July 8, 2016, followed by a final ARD Report no earlier than August 5, 2016 that will include each CoC’s PPRN, ARD, CoC Planning, and Permanent Housing Bonus amounts available.

What’s New and Special Considerations for the FY 2016 CoC Program Competition

The list below highlights some important information about what has changed, what is new, and special considerations that CoCs should make while planning for the FY 2016 CoC Program Competition. This list is not exhaustive, so please plan to watch the upcoming 2016 NOFA Broadcast and read the Competition Focus Messages for additional information.

• Tier 1 is now 93 percent of the CoC’s ARD amount, up from the 85 percent in the FY 2015 CoC Program Competition, which means CoCs will have an opportunity to protect more of the higher priority projects.
• The amount available for the FY 2016 Permanent Housing Bonus is 5 percent of the CoC’s Final Pro Rata Need (FPRN), which allows HUD to provide permanent housing bonus funding to more CoCs.
• Tier 2 project-level scoring has been revised to include:

• Up to 50 points based on CoC Application score;
• Up to 35 points based on where the CoC ranks a project in Tier 2 in the local ranking process;
• Up to 5 points based on the type of project in Tier 2; and
• Up to 10 points based on each Tier 2 project’s commitment to a Housing First approach. It is important to note that any project that identifies through the project application as Housing First will be required to operate as such.

• After several years of preparing for and providing information on performance measures, this is the first Competition where CoCs will be rated for submitting system performance measures, which will be worth 10 points. You can find more information about the System Performance Measures on the HUD Exchange.
• The local ranking process continues to be crucial to making the CoC program as effective as possible. CoCs should use objective, performance-based criteria to rate projects and should consider both the need to serve particular populations (for example, survivors of domestic violence, youth, and persons with substance use disorders) of people experiencing homelessness and the effectiveness of their projects in reducing homelessness.

HUD strongly encourages CoCs to consider the needs of special populations when making local ranking decisions. In particular, HUD has received many questions about transitional housing (TH) projects that serve people fleeing domestic violence. HUD recognizes that in many communities CoC-funded domestic violence programs are vital, particularly in those places where there are no other projects serving people fleeing domestic violence within a reasonable distance. We encourage CoCs to ensure that these programs are reviewed and ranked with special attention to the needs of the population in mind and that these programs are not unfairly disadvantaged in the local decision-making process. However, we also want to ensure that like all CoC-funded projects, projects serving people fleeing domestic violence are as effective as possible, and we encourage CoCs, when they have TH projects serving households fleeing domestic violence that are lower performing, to reallocate to other types of projects serving people fleeing domestic violence. HUD will release an additional message on this issue shortly.

Listserv Communications

All information related to the FY 2016 CoC Program Competition is communicated via the HUD Exchange Mailing List. Join the mailing list to receive important updates and reminders.

If you are aware or suspect that the Collaborative Applicant, CoC members, or interested stakeholders are not currently receiving these listserv messages, please forward the following link, https://www.hudexchange.info/mailinglist/, to them to register for the listserv messages as this is the only form of communication used by HUD to the public.

If you have questions related to subscribing to the HUD Exchange mailing list or have issues receiving listserv messages in your inbox please contact . Please be sure to add and to your contact list or safe senders list. This ensures that messages from the HUD Exchange go to your inbox and are not filtered to your spam or junk folder.

Questions

If you have questions pertaining to e-snaps technical issues, please submit your questions to the e-snaps Ask A Question (AAQ) portal on the HUD Exchange website. To submit a question to the e-snaps AAQ portal, select “e-snaps” from the “My question is related to” drop down list on Step 2 of the question submission process.

If you have questions related to the CoC Program interim rule or a policy related question, please submit your questions to the CoC Program AAQ portal. To submit a question to the CoC Program AAQ portal, select “CoC Program” from the “My question is related to” drop down list on Step 2 of the question submission process.

The AAQ portal accepts question submissions 24/7. However, responses are usually provided between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM Eastern Time, Monday through Friday, except for weekends and federal holidays. Additionally, per the FY 2016 CoC Program Competition NOFA, starting 2 days prior to the application deadline for FY 2016 funds, the AAQ will respond only to emergency technical support questions up to the deadline of Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at 7:59:59 PM EDT.