What are EHVs?
On May 5th, 2021 HUD released Notice PIH 2021-15 (HA), which announced the creation of the Emergency Housing Voucher program using American Rescue Plan funds. Duluth HRA was awarded and accepted 49 Emergency Housing Vouchers on May 24th, 2021. These 49 Emergency Housing Vouchers (EHVs) will be administered by Duluth HRA in close partnership with St. Louis County Continuum of Care. Households experiencing homelessness at risk of homelessness or fleeing violence/exploitation will be prioritized. Vouchers will be offered to households on the Coordinated Entry System southern St. Louis County priority list. The Emergency Housing Vouchers allow for some flexible funds to support landlord incentives as needed and support higher rent rates than our typical housing voucher programs. These vouchers must be awarded by September 2023 and sunset in 2030.
Proposed EHV Priority:
Clients can qualify to for an EHV in one of two ways:
- Households must be currently experiencing homelessness, at-risk of homelessness, and/or fleeing violence/exploitation to qualify for voucher. EHVs would start at the bottom of the PSH tier (score of 8) of the CES Priority list & move up from there.
(2) Households must currently be in Permanent Supportive Housing (including LTH housing supports) or Transitional Housing Programs in SLC CoC and interested in accessing EHV as a Move Up program. Move Up is a HUD program designed to move clients into units with less support (client’s choice) and free up supportive housing units for others on the Priority list who may need more supports.
Background & Justification for this approach:
PSH Score of 8 & Up: This approach could help move a households off of the CES Priority list that are generally never reached by the CES process for PSH openings. There are currently 114 households with scores of 8 on the Duluth priority list, which includes 79 singles, 17 families, & 32couples without children. 13 of these households are youth, 2 veterans, and 12 seniors (62+). There are currently 118 households with scores of 9 on the Duluth priority list, which includes 90 singles, 23 families, & 5 couples without children. 12 of these households are youth, 2 veterans, and 2 seniors (62+). Many of these households have been on the CES priority list for 2+ years.
Move Up Model: This model is the basis of a new HUD voucher program, and we could use this as a pilot to see if Move Up vouchers via HUD (only used for PSH not TH) could be a permanent resource for our CoC. This could help free up PSH units for households at the top of our current priority list. Local PSH/TH providers are giving feedback currently on how many clients could access this/benefit from this. So far our housing providers have stated 18-23 households in PSH and 7 in TH could benefit from a EHV Move Up voucher.