The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) “Grants for the Benefit of Homeless Individuals” (GBHI) Notice of Funding Availability (NOFO) should appeal to grant writers and grant applicants because the program is offering funding for activities that many homelessness services organizations are already doing—most notably, providing funding for various kinds of substance use disorder (SUD) / opioid use disorder (OUD) treatment, and, in particular, medication assisted treatment (MAT). MAT is also now easier to administer, because the “waivered prescriber” requirement has been waived. In the FY ’23 GBHI NOFO, there’s $75 million available over five years for up to thirty-two awards, and grants go for five years, with half a million per year—overall, it’s a desirable grant program. If your nonprofit organization wants to apply for SAMHSA’s “Grants for the Benefit of Homeless Individuals” program, call us at 800.540.8906 ext. 1, or email us at seliger@seliger.com, for a FREE quote on writing this SAMHSA application, or any other proposal.
The SAMHSA NOFO notes that GBHI applicants should provide a fairly typical suit of services for homeless individuals, including SUD/OUD treatment (likely via MAT, as noted above) and assistance to overcome chronic or episodic homelessness. Nonprofits are eligible. The program should probably include peer workers (often called “community health workers” or similar—”CHWs” is a fine acronym) who are going to liaise with the target population of focus.
The trick for all these programs is outside the ability of applicants to affect: getting enough housing built at all, for anyone and everyone, which is a point we’ve made in “‘Homelessness is a Housing Problem’: When cities build more housing, homelessness goes down.” Building housing for anyone is hard, which means building it for the homelessness (or whatever euphemism one may choose) is even harder. Fortunately, the SAMHSA GBHI program wants to offer help with finding or showing permanent housing through “collaboration,” including with public housing authorities (PHAs). So applicants that are, or can get, a homelessness services provider to help will be aided, even if most of the target population doesn’t wind up with a permanent living situation. Finally, typical case management services are required; for case management, applicant should probably propose an approach in which CHWs will provide warm handoffs to case management professionals. Treatment of substance-use disorder and mental illness itself is also an eligible cost, which will be appealing to healthcare organizations.
Distributing naloxone, opioid test strips, and similar harm reduction supplies are eligible activities. SAMHSA also specifically tells applicants that they need something like a “Participant Advisory Council” (PAC) to offer oversight, but SAMHSA has adopted another term: a “steering committee.” Whatever the name, the purpose is the same, and should be familiar to veteran grant writers. Beyond that, various kinds of other activities are optional, including HIV prevention, and training staff in evidence-based practices (EBPs) like Motivational Interviewing (MI) or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). How many of these activities really make it from the proposal world to the actual world? Probably not all of them, but some. SAMHSA also has an EBP warehouse that applicants can choose from, but most EBPs are essentially different routes up the same mountain.
Regardless of the route, the journey is arduous; the number of interventions that it takes to get a homeless person with SUD sober and off the street can number in the dozens, if not hundreds. Outsiders often don’t realize this. If you don’t work in the homelessness-services field, ask someone who works in emergency rooms what the population of focus for the “Grants for the Benefit of Homeless Individuals” (GBHI) program is like. The organizations operating GBHI programs are doing tough work. Grant writers should be able to evoke that work, without being melodramatic about it.
Want that GBHI grant? Contact us, so we can help make it happen. We’re here to help, and to make your life easier.