The HEARTH Act

AbstractThis article describes the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act, which was enacted in 2009 to overhaul the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD's) homelessness assistance programs. The article provides an overview of changes in HUD's programs and in the practices of communities leading up to the HEARTH Act. It provides a summary of the most important changes made by the act and some of the effects it will likely have on communities. Finally, it suggests important topics for future research.IntroductionIn 2009, the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act was included in a larger piece of legislation, passed by Congress, and signed by President Obama. The HEARTH Act accomplished the first comprehensive overhaul of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD's) homelessness programs in 15 years. During that time, HUD had changed the process for distribution of funds from its homelessness programs, and the homeless assistance field had grown and advanced, with a new focus on reducing the incidence of homelessness and even ending it . This article briefly traces that history, describing how the HEARTH Act brought the underlying statutory framework into alignment with actual practice and prepared for future development. Achievement of the HEARTH Act's ambitious goals will require a research agenda that is challenging and important, and that research agenda is discussed at the end.The Law and Practice Before HEARTHBefore the HEARTH Act passed, Title IV of the McKinney- Vento Homeless Assistance Act included authorization for a number of different competitive grant programs, with similar purposes and serving similar clienteles. Differences included the kinds of entities that could be funded, program designs, length of initial grants, and whether capital costs could be covered. The plain statutory language contemplated program operators applying to HUD for funding and HUD making decisions based on the strength of the applications. This process is indeed how the programs worked in the early years of McKinney- Vento.In addition to awarding these competitive grants, HUD distributed the Emergency Shelter Grant (ESG) by formula to state and local governments, mostly to pay for emergency shelters.Beginning in the mid-1990s, HUD and Congress began to make changes in the way these programs were administered, although without any major changes to the underlying statute. The most important change was the consolidation of the application process and funding for the competitive grants, using the following elements of the continuum-of-care approach. * Instead of individual programs competing, entire communities competed against each other. * The need for homelessness assistance and the quality of the continuum of care were the criteria used in the competition. * Need was determined through a formula that was in most aspects the same as the ESG formula. * Within communities, local decisionmakers rated individual projects by priority. Communities had broad discretion over their decisionmaking process and the substantive criteria employed. Based on the amount of money available from appropriations and the community's score in the competition, HUD would fund programs beginning at the top of the community's priority list and continuing down the list as far as that community's funding extended. * The scoring system gave some preference to each community's renewal amount - the amount necessary to fund existing projects at their current level.Congress also made changes to the system. * It set a minimum amount (in general, 30 percent) that was to be used for permanent housing. * It regularly increased funding, even in years such as the early-to-mid 2000s, when many HUD and other domestic programs were having their funding reduced. * It pushed for better quantification of the issue. …