Help Sheet 2014 Project Application Helpful Websites: 1. Alliance Website: Check the NOFA 2014 page at http://www.suburbancook.org/NOFA14.html 2. HUD/Esnaps Website: https://www.hudexchange.info/e-snaps 3. Ask A Question: https://www.hudexchange.info/get-assistance/my-question/ Project Congressional District(s): 1. Enter your ZIP PLUS FOUR at www.house.gov to determine your US Representative. The district number is next to his/her name. 2. To find your ZIP PLUS FOUR, enter your physical address at http://zip4.usps.com/zip4/welcome.jsp Continuum of Care Name and Number 1. This refers to HUD’s name for our continuum: Cook County Continuum of Care. 2. Our CoC number is: IL-511 Project 6-digit Geographic Code: 6-digit Geocode 179031 170222 170606 171302 171332 171776 172238 173228 174734 175148 175154 175364 176300 176498 Area COOK COUNTY Arlington Heights Berwyn Chicago Heights Cicero Des Plaines Evanston Hoffman Estates Mt. Prospect Oak Lawn Oak Park Palatine Schaumburg Skokie FY 2012 Fair Market Rents (FMR): 1. METROPOLITAN FMR AREA: *Chicago-Naperville-Joliet, IL HUD Metro FMR Area 2. Note: The FMRs for unit sizes larger than 4 BRs are calculated by adding 15% to the 4 BR FMR for each extra bedroom. EFFICIENCY $727 1 BR $826 2 BR $979 3 BR $1,248 4 BR $1,455 What are the Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Numbers (CFDA) and Funding Opportunity numbers for the Applicant Profile/SF-424? CFDA: 14.267 Continuum of Care Program Funding Opportunity No. FR-5800-N-30 1107 S. MANNHEIM ROAD, SUITE 304 ▪ WESTCHESTER, IL 60154 telephone 708.345.4035 ▪ fax 708.345.7855 ▪ web www.suburbancook.org 1 Helpful Hints: 1. Your Applicant Profile must be marked Complete before you can work on the Project Application. You can return to the Applicant Profile to edit it later. The e-snaps training modules cover this in detail. 2. REQUIRED ATTACHMENTS FOR PROJECT APPLICATIONS are listed on page 34 of the 2014 Funding Notice. 3. Within your Applicant Profile, be sure to replace the HUD Form 2880 with a new one from this year, rather than leave last year’s Form 2880 there. Update it with the correct info. 4. If a renewal, your budget must match what is shown in Section 3.1 on the Grant Inventory Worksheet (GIW), found on the Alliance NOFA webpage. Changes to project budget can occur only at amendment or technical submission. 5. In particular, make sure your administrative request is no greater than 7% of program expenses. “Program expenses” is your request subtotal before admin. Round down, not up. 6. If a renewal, list the most recent Grant Number, not a previous one. Use the Grant Number that appears in the Grant Inventory Worksheet, available on the Alliance NOFA webpage. 7. For new projects: Capital projects must complete the restrictive covenant (15 year use form). 8. “Special projects” refer to Permanent Housing Bonus or Samaritan Initiative projects from past competitions. MATCH & LEVERAGE QUESTIONS: What should be in our match and leverage letters? For new projects: Match must be cash or in-kind resources in hand for 1st year. All match and leverage must be documented with letters to accompany your application. Match and leverage letters need to include the following: name of the organization providing the resource; the amount of cash (or the cash value of the in-kind contribution); the type of activity for which the resource will be used (e.g., acquisition, rehabilitation, new construction, operations, services, etc.); the name of the project sponsor organization and/or the name of the project; and the time period the funds or resource will be available. Can we use ESG as cash match for our project? Very few activity costs are allowable under both ESG and CoC funds. In the limited instances where ESG is covering a cost that is also a CoC eligible activity, and the program participants meet both the ESG and CoC eligibility criteria, you may be able to use the ESG as match for the CoC program. Note, you cannot use CoC funds to match ESG and use ESG to match CoC funds, and you cannot “doublecount” other private funds as match for both CoC and ESG. What is the value of volunteer services for in-kind match or leveraging purposes? Donated professional services should be valued at the customary rate. A helpful resource on the value of volunteer time: http://www.independentsector.org/volunteer_time. GOOD TO KNOW: Educational Assurances: Similar to last year, project applicants who will be serving families with children need to assure that their policies are consistent with a child’s educational rights and that a staff person is designated to assist them, as explained in the NOFA. FFATA Reporting: Read the General Section for more detail. In short, any awardee receiving $25,000 or more must report some basics about the organization and the award into a government website www.fsrs.gov, including executive compensation if organization revenues are greater than $25 million. Also, the awardee must report information about any subawardees receiving $25,000 or more, including executive compensation if their revenue exceeds $25 million. 2 In HUD Project Application, Part 3B, Question 2: Answer yes to this question about whether you participate in the CoC’s coordinated assessment system. What this implies is that if your program is PSH or Safe Haven, you coordinate with the Alliance staff to prioritize vulnerable homeless households for vacancies, and/or that your agency’s resources can be accessed through the Virtual Call Center or a resulting referral. HMIS Data Quality, Part 4C: In HUD Project Application, Part 4C, Questions 1, 2a, 2b: Use ART report 0625 HUD CoC APR. Note that the HMIS report tells you number of clients, and the HUD application refers to percentages. Question 3: you are asked to report on HMIS data quality and missing values for HUD-required data elements. Use ART Report 0213 to answer this question. Report for calendar year 2013: in the ART report 0213, use a start date of 1/1/2013 and end date of 1/1/2014. The effective date should be “today”. Ignore the “EDA” prompts. For Zip Code of Last Permanent Address: the 0213 report has two options, “SubCook” and “HUD”. Use the HUD calculation. Report tabs: the first tab labeled “Report Information” will tell how many clients were entered in HMIS as being served during the year for each program. The tab labeled “Tab-A Summary” will give the data quality information for all providers included in the report. The report can be run for multiple programs at once, in which case a “Tab-B Summary by Program” will provide data quality for each provider separately, one per page. Partnership programs: Programs where data has been entered by more than one agency for a single project will need to request a combined report from Alliance HMIS staff. Email peggy@suburbancook.org, Jeremy@suburbancook.org or lynn@suburbancook.org. Project Participants, Part 5A-B: In HUD Project Application, Part 5A-B: This is a projection of households and clients to be served. You do not NEED to run an HMIS report to get this information. It should express what is a typical or planned make-up of your participants when you are at full occupancy. If looking at the past make-up of your program participants is helpful in completing these questions, you may use ART Report #0636. Choose a date that reflects when your program was operating at maximum capacity and that you believe was typical of your client make-up. Be sure the “effective date” and “date of max capacity PLUS 1 day” responses match. HEARTH-Related Changes: Homeless definition: With the HEARTH Act passed in May 2009, HUD was instructed to make changes to the homeless definition. The final rule (https://www.hudexchange.info/resource/1928/hearthdefining-homeless-final-rule/) was published on December 5, 2011, and the new definition is in effect. HUD has placed limitations on when “Category 3” homeless households (doubled up families and children) can be served, and no projects in our Continuum are currently eligible to serve doubled up families and children. CoC Interim Rule: The Continuum of Care Program Interim Rule was released on July 31, 2012, and is posted here: https://www.hudexchange.info/resource/2033/hearth-coc-program-interim-rule/. In the rule, the Supportive Housing Program (SHP) and Shelter Plus Care (S+C) program are combined into the Continuum of Care Program. While all renewals eligible under the old programs are eligible to renew under the new program, every project is responsible for getting familiar with many important changes that will impact them, including... Match requirements: Match can be cash or in-kind. New projects must provide match and leverage letters to the Alliance as a part of their application. Renewal projects are responsible for keeping match 3 and leverage commitments on file and available for monitoring. Match is calculated on your total request amount, excluding leasing. Example: Your total request is $260,000, and $160,000 of that is for leasing. That leaves $100,000 in other budget items including admin. Take 25% of $100,000 (which is $25,000) to get your match requirement. You could fulfill that match requirement with a combination of cash and in-kind resources whose total value is at least $25,000. One-Year Term: New projects may request a one-year term unless they are requesting capital funds (acquisition, rehab, new construction). In that case, the project must have at least a three-year term. All renewal projects will have one-year terms. Ranking and Tiers: When the Alliance submits the combined application to HUD, all projects must be listed in a ranked order. Furthermore, HUD has created two tiers, where Tier 1 projects can add up to an amount equivalent to our Annual Renewal Demand minus 2%. Tier 2 includes those projects that fit into our Final Pro Rata Need but that were ranked lower than the Tier 1 projects. Participant Eligibility Subpopulation Consistency: Both the HUD Project Application and the Alliance application ask for your subpopulation targeting in a number of different ways. Be sure that your figures make sense and are consistent with each other. Use consistent figures whenever you’re asked about persons served, households served, number of units, the performance measure universe, subpopulation targeting and so forth. Chronic homelessness in particular shows up in a number of places. Know the difference between total units and turnover units. Be consistent throughout. Permanent Supportive Housing: PSH participants can only come from the streets, other places not meant for human habitation, emergency shelters or safe havens. If they come from transitional housing, then they must have come from the streets, shelters, etc., at the time they were entering TH. However, a person living in TH is no longer considered chronically homeless for the purposes of entering PSH. So, for PSH that is dedicated to chronically homeless people, no one can come from TH. Rapid Re-Housing: Three CoC-funded projects in our Continuum are considered Rapid Re-Housing. RRH participants can only come from the streets or shelter. Transferring a participant from RRH to PSH is permitted. You should discuss individual cases with your HUD field office representative. See page 26-27 of 2014 Funding Notice for more info on eligible participants. New Projects Reallocation: Permanent Supportive Housing, dedicated exclusively (100%) for chronically homeless people. Reallocation: Rapid Re-Housing for households with dependent children. Bonus Project 2014: $1,646,717 for a single project (1-year or longer term) Permanent Supportive Housing, 100% for chronically homeless persons, as described on pages 13-16 of the 2014 Funding Notice. Additional requirements include that it be scattered site, 30% cap on services, must be operating within 6 months of award, participating in coordinated assessment, strongly connected to mainstream services already (including Medicaid enrollment, Medicaid-financed supportive services, Housing First practices, strong leverage [200%]). 4