News from the National Alliance to End Homelessness
December 6, 2011 – (RealEstateRama) — HUD officially published the regulations for the new Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) program in today’s Federal Register. The regulations will go into effect in 30 days, on January 4. Public comments will be due in 60 days, on February 3. The final regulation on defining “homeless” was also officially published in the Federal Register today, and those changes will also go into effect on January 4.
Resources
The Alliance has compiled on HERE a number of excellent resources on how to implement the new ESG program. A recording of their webinar from last week reviewing the regulations and applicable lessons learned from HPRP will be added to that site shortly.
You can watch this WEBSITE for additional resources in the coming weeks. The Alliance expects to publish additional analyses of the regulations and our recommendations, along with sample comments that could be used as a guide as your organization or community develops its own comments.
Timing
HUD had informally published both of these regulations on November 15 on the HUD HRE website. Those documents noted that they would go into effect 30 days after being published in the Federal Register, but we did not know when that would be. However, now that they have been published in the official Federal Register, the countdown has officially begun for the regulations to go into effect 30 days from today.
Normally, HUD issues draft regulations, the public comments on those regulations, and then HUD takes those comments into account before publishing a final regulation that goes into effect. Because Congress provided money in FY 2011 for the new ESG program and there is a rush for the money to hit the streets as quickly as possible, HUD decided to issue an interim regulation which will go into effect on January 4. HUD will then take into account any comments received prior to February 3 before it issues the final regulation at some point in the future.
