Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program | FR 6500 N 35

Opportunity Information: Apply for FR 6500 N 35

The Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) is a competitive grant opportunity run by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to help communities build and carry out a coordinated, community-wide strategy to prevent and end youth homelessness. Under this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO), HUD planned to select up to 25 communities nationwide to participate in the demonstration. The central idea is not just to fund individual projects in isolation, but to push selected communities to design a more complete local system that can measurably reduce homelessness among young people by aligning partners, resources, and decision-making around a shared plan.

Only Continuum of Care (CoC) Collaborative Applicants are eligible to apply on behalf of a community, which is important because it ties eligibility to the existing HUD CoC planning and coordination structure. Applications for community selection were required to be submitted through Grants.gov, with a deadline of June 28, 2022 (11:59:59 PM Eastern). HUD indicated it would announce selected communities in August 2022. While applications are scored using rating and ranking criteria described in the NOFO, HUD also reserved the right to select a lower-scoring application in certain situations, which signals that geographic balance, policy priorities, or other considerations could influence final selections beyond raw point totals.

A major requirement is that the applying community demonstrate a strong partnership structure focused specifically on youth. Communities needed to include a youth action board (so people with lived experience and youth voice are built into planning and oversight), the local or state public child welfare agency, and a broad set of additional partners. This reflects HUDs emphasis on cross-system coordination, since youth homelessness often intersects with foster care involvement, juvenile justice, education systems, behavioral health, and other services. The expectation is that communities will use this coalition to develop and implement a Coordinated Community Plan (CCP) to prevent and end youth homelessness, rather than relying on fragmented programs that do not connect well to each other.

On funding, the NOFO offered significant flexibility and scale. Selected communities could apply for project funding ranging from $1 million up to $15 million per community, with award size based on factors like youth population and poverty rate. HUD described an overall demonstration total of roughly $72 million. The grant term for funded projects was set at 2 years, and projects could later be eligible for renewal through the standard CoC Program process as long as they continue to meet statutory CoC requirements. This structure is meant to support near-term implementation and learning while also creating a pathway to longer-term sustainability if projects perform well and remain compliant.

In terms of what could be funded, YHDP was designed to let communities use the full menu of project types available under the CoC Program to serve homeless youth, including unaccompanied youth and pregnant or parenting youth up to age 24. Beyond that, HUD explicitly encouraged innovation by allowing communities to request project types or approaches that might require waivers or exceptions to certain CoC Program or McKinney-Vento Act requirements (as outlined in Appendix A of the NOFO). This is a key feature of a demonstration program: communities are expected to test new combinations of housing and services, improve how young people access help, and tailor interventions to the different subgroups and pathways that lead youth into homelessness.

The priority behind the program is systems change with measurable impact. HUD framed YHDP as a way to demonstrate that a comprehensive, coordinated approach can dramatically reduce youth homelessness. That includes deeper local understanding of who is experiencing homelessness (especially subgroups of unaccompanied youth), why they are becoming homeless, and which interventions are most effective for different needs and circumstances. Communities are expected to use that understanding to design stronger plans, strengthen coordination, and implement better targeted projects. To support this work, HUD also made technical assistance available to selected communities to help them develop and implement the CCP, which can include guidance on planning, stakeholder engagement, project design, and execution.

Administratively, this opportunity was listed as a discretionary grant in the community development activity category under CFDA 14.276. Eligible applicants were broadly described at the government level (state, county, city/township, special district), but the controlling eligibility rule in practice is that the submission must come from the CoC Collaborative Applicant for the community. The funding opportunity number for the NOFO was FR 6500 N 35, and it was originally posted March 24, 2022, with an expected 25 awards and a maximum award ceiling of $15,000,000 per community.

• The US Department of Housing and Urban Development in the community development sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 14.276.
• This funding opportunity was created on Mar 24, 2022.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jun 28, 2022 The application deadline is 115959 PM Eastern Standard time on. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $15,000,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 25 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Others (see text field entitled Additional Information on Eligibility for clarification).

Apply for FR 6500 N 35

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