The Administration on Children, Youth and Families, Family and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB) announced the release of the Fiscal Year 2022 Transitional Living Program (TLP) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). The Transitional Living Programs implement, enhance, and/or support effective strategies for successful transition to sustainable living for runaway and homeless youth ages 16 to under 22 and/or pregnant and parenting youth ages 16 to under 22 and their dependent child(ren). Grants awarded under this announcement will have a start date of September 30, 2022 and will be for a 36-month project period. Applications are due by June 21, 2022.

Economic assistance programs help provide low-income individuals and families with income stability, with benefits accruing not just to the families receiving assistance but to the economy as a whole. This paper reviews how cash assistance programs—the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Child Tax Credit, and TANF—and other in-kind supports, such as SNAP, Medicaid, and housing assistance, serve as a backstop for unpredictable income, low income, and joblessness among low-income households who face economic transitions. The paper also highlights the critical role of the expanded Child Tax Credit, which provided families a monthly cash payment between July and December 2021.

The Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program (YHDP) is an initiative designed to reduce the number of youth experiencing homelessness. The goal of the YHDP is to support selected communities, including rural, suburban, and urban areas across the United States, in the development and implementation of a coordinated community approach to preventing and ending youth homelessness. This Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) establishes the funding criteria for the FY 2021 YHDP. Through this NOFO, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will award approximately $72 million in up to 25 participating communities, with a priority for communities with substantial rural populations in up to eight locations. Applications are due by June 28, 2022.

The Administration for Children and Families, along with the U.S. Department of the Treasury, hosted a webinar in April 2022 to highlight contemporary housing challenges impacting families with low incomes. This webinar provided background information on the Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERA) and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program as well as discussed how TANF programs and ERA grantees can build and sustain partnerships to expand housing services. Presenters provided an overview of the ERA funding stream and TANF program, principles for TANF and ERA stakeholders to build partnerships to improve housing stability, and an example of community activities used to build and sustain partnerships.

Providing access to tangible resources can strengthen families and communities by avoiding and de-escalating crises, reducing parental stress, increasing access to safe housing and reliable childcare, and ensuring children have the material items they need to thrive. This brief discusses the impact of community-based strategies, connections, and collaborations that offer economic supports to address families’ basic needs, keeping children safe and families together. These include housing supports, food assistance, financial supports, employment assistance, early care and education services, legal services, and medical and behavioral health care.

The child welfare-to-prison pipeline describes the systems that funnel youth from the child welfare system into the juvenile justice system. The child welfare system often targets and disproportionately surveils black and brown families—largely those living in poverty and dealing with the challenges of mental health, substance use, and over-policing by the criminal legal system. The National Association of Counsel for Children (NACC) will host a webinar on March 22, 2022 from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. ET. Speakers will stress the importance of strengthening community resources and preventing family disintegration as a tool to end the child welfare-to-prison pipeline. There is a registration fee for non-NACC members to attend this webinar.

In 2013, the Office of Family Assistance released Information Memorandum (TANF-ACF-IM-2013-01) “Use of TANF Funds to Serve Homeless Families and Families at Risk of Experiencing Homelessness” in recognition of the integral role TANF can play in family stability. That memorandum highlights the important role TANF can play in helping families experiencing homelessness, offers approaches for using TANF funding, and provides examples of existing state initiatives. To better understand how states and localities are currently using TANF funds to support families experiencing homelessness, the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation (OPRE) funded a study. This brief summarizes different approaches that TANF agencies can pursue to provide housing and other related assistance.

This Office of Family Assistance brief is part of a broader study exploring how Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs across the country use TANF funds to serve and support families experiencing or at risk of homelessness. It describes housing-related challenges that families faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, both nationally and in communities visited for this study. The brief also focuses on how the TANF agency in one of these communities, Boulder County, Colorado, responded to families’ housing needs specifically at the beginning of the pandemic. It details the shifts and associated actions Boulder County’s TANF agency took in response to housing challenges posed by the pandemic.

This toolkit tracks the steps the federal government has taken to implement new resources and administrative changes within human services and education programs authorized by:

• The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA)
• The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act)
• The Continuing Appropriations Act of 2021
• The Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2021
• The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARP) 

Agencies highlighted in the toolkit are the Administration for Children and Families, the Administration for Community Living, the Food and Nutrition Service, the U.S. Department of Education, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Federal Communications Commission.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated housing instability for families with low incomes and created an even greater need for affordable, stable housing. Two-generation programs, which strive to end intergenerational poverty by supporting both parents and children living in the same household to improve life outcomes for the whole family, are one model of effective collaboration to increase housing stability. This blogpost, based on research on multiple two-generation partnerships, identifies four key elements to using two-generational programs to promote housing stability.