On September 16, the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) announced their new vision, mission, values, priorities, and guiding principles as part of their strategic alignment initiative, which explains the criteria they will use to decide which programs get funding.
Many of the provisions are highly concerning and unaligned with known best practices for serving youth and young adults experiencing homelessness.
ACF is careful to couch the initiative’s provisions in protective language such as “to the extent permitted by law.” Many of these provisions have appeared in other NOFOs and are currently being challenged in court, including the requirements under Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets and Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders. If the court challenges are unsuccessful, ACF could be free to fully or partially implement the provisions. If the court challenges are successful, ACF could be limited in what it can require programs or communities to do.
Changes That Could Most Impact Youth Homelessness Providers
- Promoting Marriage and Family Formation ACF will prioritize funding for programs that promote marriage, forming two-parent families, and that recognize and support pro-life initiatives.
- Eliminating DEI and Gender Ideology in Funded Programs ACF will not fund programs that implement diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and that “advance gender ideology,” meaning anything outside of “biological definitions of sex.”
- Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders ACF will prohibit anyone who isn’t protected by PRWORA or other federal laws from accessing services. They will also “require states and grantees to submit accurate data”—exactly what this provision means is unclear, but it could be that they will attempt to require grantees to collect data on immigration status.
- Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets In response to the Administration’s Executive Order by the same name, federal agencies are attempting to prohibit funding for programs in communities and/or states that do not enforce anti-encampment laws, do not comply with immigration enforcement, and use harm-reduction or housing first policies.
- Enforcing this mandate is temporarily prohibited due to a lawsuit over the same language in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s recent Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for building/acquiring/rehabilitating permanent supportive housing, but ACF couches themselves by saying, “ACF will implement these priorities consistent with applicable laws, regulations, court orders, and any required procedures.”
- Concerningly, this section calls out the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act (RHYA) program, saying ACF will “increase competition among grantees” and “[broaden] the applicant pool and [hold] grantees to higher standards of effectiveness” related to increasing public safety and disavowing harm reduction and housing first.
- Ensuring Value Alignment in Funding ACF will evaluate programs by how closely they align with these new priorities.
These new priorities will likely be reflected in future NOFOs (some were already present in the recent RHYA NOFO) and are an outline of the criteria ACF will use to review grant applications and evaluate current grantees.
As we learn more about how this initiative will be implemented, we will share what youth providers need to do in order to maintain the funding that is critical to serving young people, while not abandoning your guiding principles and best practices.
