Evaluation of the HUD Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project

The purpose of the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project Evaluation (YHDE), by the Office of Policy Development and Research, at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), is to assess the progress and results of the 2017 YHDP grantee communities in developing and executing a coordinated community approach to preventing and ending youth homelessness. YHDP grant funds help communities to work with youth advisory boards, child welfare agencies, and other community partners to create comprehensive community plans to end youth homelessness; these comprehensive plans are a major focus for the grantees in the first grant year. The grant funding is used for a variety of housing options, including rapid re-housing, permanent supportive housing, and transitional housing, as well as innovative programs. YHDP also will support youth-focused performance measurement and coordinated entry systems. In order to obtain a clear picture of YHDP grant activities, this longitudinal, multi-level evaluation will measure activities and progress of grantees essential to building and sustaining effective community change. Data collection will occur during two evaluation components with each component including data collection activities and analyses. These components include two waves of a web-based survey of Continuums of Care, and site visits with each demonstration community and the three selected comparison sites. Component one, a web-based survey of Continuums of Care (CoCs) in the U.S. will be administered twice, in Years 1 and 4 of the evaluation, to all CoC program directors across the country excluding the 10 YHDP grantees and three comparison communities, for a total of 400 survey participants each wave. These data will provide an understanding of system developments occurring across the country and provide a comparative basis for understanding the demonstration communities. The survey will ask questions about the nature and capacity of the prevention and crisis approaches in place, the housing and service solutions, and the strategies for screening and assessing youth. It will focus on understanding the coordination and collaboration between the homeless assistance system and mainstream service systems, as well as whether and how the system prioritizes and coordinates referrals to the different programs. The second data collection component is comprised of site visits which will be conducted with each demonstration community and the three comparison non-grantee CoCs. The site visits will include interviews with key informants, with project technical assistance (TA) providers, and youth, as well as focus groups with different subgroups of youth. The site visit guide will describe data collection procedures to be followed to ensure rigor and consistency across site visit teams. The first site visit will be conducted as soon as OMB approval is received to collect information while grantees are developing their coordinated community plans. The second site visit will be conducted in early 2019 to explore how the plans are being implemented, as well as barriers to or facilitators of change. The third and final site visits will be scheduled after community plans have been in effect for at least one year (mid-2020).

The latest form for Evaluation of the HUD Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project expires 2021-08-31 and can be found here.

Continuum of Care (CoC) Web Survey (CoC) Program Directors

Federal Enterprise Architecture: Community and Social Services - Community and Regional Development