Jun. 7—BEMIDJI — An increased effort to make homelessness rare, brief and non-reoccurring for youth in Minnesota is underway thanks to funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The exciting news of the secured funds was delivered on Thursday at the

Northwest Minnesota Foundation

in Bemidji to a room of community leaders by HUD Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development Marion McFadden, along with HUD staff from Minneapolis and Chicago.

“We are here to announce first-of-its-kind grant awards under our Youth Homelessness Systems Improvement Grant, which we call YHSI,” McFadden told the anxiously awaiting crowd. “We are so thrilled and proud to award $2 million to address youth homelessness in Minnesota.”

She added that the team will be making announcements for awards across the country totaling $51.1 million, serving 38 communities representing 26 states, Puerto Rico and Guam.

According to HUD, the goal of YHSI grants is to create a more seamless and coordinated system of care for youth experiencing or at risk of homelessness. These grants aim to improve the identification of youth in need and make it easier for them to navigate available services.

These grants will be able to fund projects that:

* Create and build capacity for Youth Action Boards.

* Establish regional committees to direct efforts across multiple systems, including education, justice and child welfare.

* Collect and use data on at-risk youth and youth experiencing homelessness.

* Develop strong leaders within a community.

* Improve the coordination, communication, operation and administration of homeless assistance projects to better serve youth, including prevention and diversion strategies.

“I want to assure you that we are working to address homelessness with the urgency that it requires,” McFadden said. “It’s a priority for the President and it’s a priority for all of us at HUD.”

She added that while many other partners are working specifically on housing, these funds will be dedicated to helping address issues on the resource and policy side.

“We have other funds that are directly addressing housing needs, but these funds are different and unique,” McFadden said. “They’ll help communities build a strong, resilient and equitable homelessness response system. We want it to be less siloed and we want to take down the barriers that we’ve heard about from young people who are in crisis.”

She explained how in their work with those in the housing field and listening to young people, many have expressed their struggles in navigating the current system.

“People don’t know where to turn. It may be really long distances they have to go to get help, only to find out they’re not in the right place,” she said. “So this investment of $2 million will enable you to collaborate and make tighter connections and help you better identify people in crisis so that they can get the help that we all want them to get more quickly.”

She also noted her appreciation that the

Northwest Minnesota Foundation’s

grant application was written in partnership with the

Minnesota Tribal Collaborative

and the

Northeast Continuum of Care.

“The application submitted by the partnership highlights the needs of Indigenous youth who are unstably housed or experiencing homelessness,” she said, “and it will work to create partnerships across northern Minnesota to prevent or resolve homelessness among Indigenous youth.”

McFadden highlighted the importance of this fact given that Indigenous youth represent 40% of the youth experiencing homelessness in northern Minnesota, while they are only 10% of the overall population of young people.

“Aligning different sectors is going to make a change across the nation so that young people can focus on building their futures, not worrying about where they’re going to sleep at night,” she left off. “At HUD, we’re proud to fund these new grants to ignite the change. We recognize tribal sovereignty and are working closely with our Tribal Intergovernmental Advisory Committee to understand how we can better meet our obligations in working with our tribal partners.”

Barbara Johnson, homelessness program officer at NMF and coordinator for the Northwest Minnesota Continuum of Care, further emphasized this point.

“Today is not only a testament to the collaboration and partnership between the Minnesota Tribal Collaborative, the Northwest and Northeast CoCs but also the coordination of all of our partners in this room working together to make homelessness rare, brief and non-reoccurring for youth in Minnesota.”

According to Homelessness Program Officer Margret Treuer, the Northwest Minnesota Foundation serves as the collaborative applicant for the

Northwest Continuum of Care,

which places the organization in a unique position of firsts.

“We are the first, and currently the only, continuum of care in the state of Minnesota to be backed by a community foundation,” she explained. “We are the first continuum of care to directly tackle youth homelessness, to develop youth-specific data plans and goals, and the first in the state of Minnesota to receive funding through the Youth Housing Demonstration Project.”

Treuer detailed how when she and her colleagues came across the unique funding opportunity, they knew it was the first of its kind and the first source of federal funding to directly address youth homelessness from a system planning approach.

“Surrounded by three of the largest tribal nations in Minnesota, we know there’s a need to address youth homelessness specifically in our Indigenous communities,” she added. “We know that we need to build a system of homeless response that advances racial justice with tribal sovereignty at the center.”

According to Treuer, in 2023 the collective number of Indigenous youth and young adults under 24 years old who were experiencing homelessness comprised over 39% of the region’s homeless population. Currently, in northwest Minnesota, 72% of the youth who have been homeless for more than 90 days are Indigenous.

This is just one reason why Minnesota Tribal Collaborative Chair Tammy Moreland said that now is the time for real change to begin.

“Now more than ever, we need innovative minds and bold thinkers to step forward and create a future for the next seven generations,” Moreland said. “We have a vision that can transform the world, and we don’t wait for the right moment. We make that change happen now. I want to thank the Northwest Foundation and HUD for allowing us to share our ideas. I am thankful that we can collaborate with like-minded individuals and start building solutions for tomorrow, today.”

Elizabeth Arevalo, a member of the NWCoC Youth Action Board, shared her experiences with homelessness throughout her young adult years and why she is an advocate for funding like the Youth System Housing Initiative.

“What made the difference for me was being connected to a youth-specific program like

The Link

and being assigned a case manager who didn’t treat me like a number and really cared about me and helped me overcome all the barriers that I encountered, regardless of how difficult they were,” she said. “I cannot tell you enough how important it is to have low-barrier housing and services that considered me ‘homeless enough’ and a priority.”

Treuer said though the organization is still in awe they have the funding, they are already thinking of the next steps.

“We’re just really excited, I think we’re kind of in a daze right now,” she said with a laugh. “Like, wow, what happened?”

While NMF receives the funds as the grantee, funds will be sub-granted out in partnership with the Minnesota Tribal Collaborative, the Northeast Continuum of Care and the Northwest CoC.

She said their first step is to meet with their grant partners to connect them with the current models in place serving youth in the region and share information on how they can replicate some of that within their systems.

“We aren’t going to be in the business of telling tribes or other CoCs what to do,” Treuer added. “So we’ll kind of come up with one giant strategic plan and then each sub-grantee will use that information to create their own individualized strategic plan.”

One element Treuer noted they are working to improve is protecting tribal data sovereignty.

“We’re really looking at data sovereignty with this grant,” she said, adding that tribal data is owned, operated, managed and protected by tribal nations. “Just because we’re funding something doesn’t mean that we’ll be asking for unsolicited data. So we’re evaluating some of our current data systems right now and the way that we’re managing youth information.”

She said this new model will allow youth to have access to their case notes and personal data information, help them have a better understanding of the case conferencing model used to allocate resources to youth and stay updated with their caseworker.

“The hope is this will help to empower youth to access their own data and understand the process a little bit more clearly,” she added, “because that’s one of the biggest things that we hear within our region that we know we need to fix.”

Other funding announced during the event includes a $72 million funding opportunity as part of the eighth round of funding under the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program and supportive services programs.

These include rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, transitional housing, host homes and wrap-around services such as education, health and workforce support to help youth access and maintain housing.

“The Northwest CoC won a grant in one of the earliest competitions and now the Northeast CoC is eligible to apply and I wish you all the best of luck,” McFadden left off. “Congratulations on your $2 million Youth Homelessness Systems Improvement Grant. I’m really, really proud of your efforts.”

More information on the

YHDP

and

YHSI

grants can be found on the HUD website.