Is need enough? The determinants of intergovernmental grants to local homeless programs

The Continuum of Care (CoC) is one of the largest homeless programs in the U.S. The main goal of the CoC is to ameliorate homelessness by implementing an annual intergovernmental grant competition to allocate federal funding to local homeless programs. Although the availability of federal grants is the main factor motivating many local organizations to participate in homeless programs, relatively little empirical evidence is available to show why some recipients are allocated abundant resources, while others are not. This study provides the first step toward empirically determining the local factors using actual variables that consider the grant decision-makers in order to understand the flow of federal grants for local homeless programs. Findings indicate that local capacity is positively associated with the allocation of federal grants, while local need is negatively related to the flow of such funding.