REPORT TO HOUSING AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION
SUBJECT
Title
Biennial Review of Priority Needs for Human Services and Recommendation to City Council
Report
BACKGROUND
The City provides grants to eligible human services agencies on a competitive basis pursuant to Council Policy 5.1.3 (Human Services), originally adopted in 1981, and amended in 1999 and 2006. Eligible human service agencies are those that provide assistance programs for lower-income clients (a household income of less than 80% of area median income), such as food, legal services, health care, literacy classes, child-care, and so on. Most of the clients served by these programs are seniors, people with disabilities, very low-income households, and homeless persons. The City uses a combination of its annual Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) from the federal government to fund these grants, and a smaller supplemental amount of City General Funds.
Applications for the human services grants are solicited every two years, following hearings held by the Housing and Human Services Commission (HHSC) and City Council to determine the City's current "priority human service needs". Human service grants are awarded conditionally for a two-year period, with the second-year grants conditioned on several factors, such as successful completion of the grant activity in the first year, compliance with the terms of the grant agreement, and availability of federal funding for the second year.
Sunnyvale establishes priority needs to help guide human service grant applications; those priority needs are identified through this hearing process as most deserving of the City's funds designated for human services for the upcoming two years. The total amount of funding requested usually exceeds the amount available by a factor of two or more. It is therefore helpful for applicants to know the priorities so that they better determine if their programs are likely to succeed in receiving a grant through the City's gr...
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