President Barack Obama’s Fiscal Year 2016 budget proposal, released on February. 2, includes increased funding for homeless children and families as well as significant investments in child care.
The National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH) webinar analyzed Obama’s annual federal budget proposal regarding its effects on federal funding for homeless-assistance programs.
The proposal indicated an 8.7 percent increase for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which would be $4 billion more than 2015.
The president proposed $2.48 billion for the McKinney Vento Homeless Assistance Grants, 16.5 percent higher than last year. This proposed funding can continue the HUD services under the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act (HEARTH).
From this HUD funding, Continuums of Care (COC) would receive $2.22 billion, which would aid in the creation of 25,000 permanent housing units, as well as fund 15,000 rapid re-housing interventions, as reported on the NAEH webinar. This also includes $7 million for National Homelessness Data Analysis and new vouchers.
According to the NAEH, these resources are sufficient to end chronic homelessness by the end of 2017 and enough to build resources needed to end family and youth homelessness by 2020.
Also in the proposal was an increase of $1.5 million (for a total of $10.1 billion) to Head Start, an early childhood development program, in efforts to make it a full day and year round program. The president also proposed universal access to preschool for children in impoverished families.
The proposed budget suggests tripling funds for the domestic violence hotline as well as providing $9 million to help combat human and sex trafficking among homeless youth, $6.2 billion more than last year.
The president’s proposal also called for a rise of more than $21.1 billion for tenant-based vouchers, the amount that is needed to simply maintain the 2.4 million households in Section 8 housing, according to NAEH. This does not include any new HUD Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing vouchers.
The U.S Department of Veterans Affairs would receive $1.4 billion under the president’s proposal. NAEH said this amount is necessary to end homelessness among veterans by the end of this year.
NAEH encouraged “advocates [to] strongly make a case to their members in Congress” for this budget proposal by raising awareness in local communities about how these proposals can help aid the homeless community at large.
“We can continue to talk about what we need to do about homelessness in our communities as a way to raise awareness of the spending caps that need to be loosened,” said Steve Berg, NAEH’s vice president for programs and policies. “If the caps don’t get raised, spending will be cut significantly.”
