The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the National HIV/AIDS Strategy

I am pleased to share with you the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) implementation plan for the National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS). HUD is committed to working with our Federal and community partners to ensure the success of this national response to HIV/AIDS. In addition to the attached summary, I invite you to review HUD’s plan as posted on HIV.gov.

Research has demonstrated that stable housing is an effective strategy in both reducing an individual’s HIV risk and increasing treatment adherence for persons living with HIV/AIDS. As the nation’s housing agency, HUD’s contributions will involve actions to maximize the effective use of housing resources and to enhance integration of housing programs with comprehensive HIV/AIDS care and supportive services. HUD’s FY2010-2015 Strategic Plan and Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness (PDF 3MB) will also serve as foundations for carrying out these efforts.

These new documents are unified in proposing actions to increase stable housing for low-income, homeless and special needs populations, and to enhance their access to health care, supportive services, income supports, employment and other assistance. The Office of HIV/AIDS Housing will work with its Federal and community partners to develop place-based approaches to more effectively plan, deliver, and evaluate Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) programs and other related resources. Place-based approaches recognize that different places face vastly different challenges, which require very different solutions. This approach enables communities to identify distinct needs and develop locally-driven, integrated, and place-conscious solutions. Communities that have demonstrated success in this arena will be identified as model programs and will help inform our efforts to achieve housing stability and improved health outcomes for persons living with HIV/AIDS in other communities. As the partnerships with community efforts make use of multiple resources to achieve housing stability and improved health, HUD is also seeking to better engage with program stakeholders, grant administrators, area providers and program clients to enhance our results.

I am pleased to announce a HUD online public forum intended to solicit ideas and suggestions for advancing HOPWA’s contributions to stable housing and health outcomes. This online HOPWA forum is available through the HUD Ideas in Action webpage, and is open for public comment. Our comment period on this site will close on April 19, 2011. This consultation is one of the features of HUD’s Open Government Initiative. I expect to share other communications with HOPWA grantees and other stakeholders in this ongoing focus.

You are invited to submit your ideas and suggestions related to:

(a) how HUD can best seek to update the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) funding formula to better target resources to need;

(b) how we can increase access to housing and non-medical supportive services for people living with HIV/AIDS; and

(c) how we can enhance the HOPWA program to help prevent and end homelessness for people living with HIV/AIDS.

On behalf of the HOPWA team at HUD, I look forward to considering your responses as the HOPWA partnerships work to strengthen housing results as part of the national response to HIV/AIDS. Thank you for your dedication to this work.

In my next post, I will discuss one of the important activities in the HUD NHAS Operational Plan: working with Congress to shift to HIV/AIDS case reporting as the basis for HOPWA formula grants.