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$12 million awarded to county in HUD grants
The Alameda County Housing and Community Development Department announced today that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has awarded $12 million in grants to county programs that help the homeless.
The grants will help to keep 26 county programs that help homeless people in the county find permanent and transitional housing.
They will also help launch a new program, the Russell Street Residence of the Berkeley Emergency Food and Housing Project, which will create 18 new housing units for mentally disabled residents.
The awards sum is more than $200,000 from what the HUD gave Alameda County last year. The amount places Alameda County behind only Los Angeles County as the jurisdiction that received the most money.
Grants include a total of $2.1 million for Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency, a community group that will use the money to operate five programs to help house people with mental disabilities, AIDS and drug problems.
The group Jobs for the Homeless Consortium received more than $2.5 million that will allow it to provide intensive job training and employment services to more than 1,000 homeless people.
The HUD also renewed the grants of four collaborative projects.
Those include the Homeless Families Support Network, which is led by the city of Oakland and provides 54 units of affordable housing; the Alameda County Homeless Youth Collaborative, which provides housing for young homeless people in Oakland and Berkeley; the Alameda Point Collaborative, which provides housing and support for some 700 homeless who live in the former Alameda Naval Air station; and the Southern Alameda County Housing/Job Linkages Program, which provides subsidies for temporary housing, job preparation and placement services for homeless families in the middle, southern and eastern areas of Alameda County.
Commenting on the grant announcement, Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty said: “This award today reminds us all that in this time of national crisis, we must not forget to continue to support programs that serve those in need in our communities.”
