BATON ROUGE - The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has awarded a total of more than $16 million to 36 homeless housing and service programs across the state.

$11.4 million of the funding will go to projects in the Baton Rouge area, according to HUD with the largest portion of the money going to the Louisiana Housing Corporation/Louisiana State Permanent Supportive Housing Initiative.

“As we make real progress toward ending homelessness in this country, HUD is challenging communities to deploy more cost effective solutions to help individuals, families and young people experiencing homelessness,” said HUD Secretary Julian Castro. “We know how to end homelessness and the grants we announce today, like those we awarded earlier this year, are supporting evidence-based local programs that are proving to prevent and end homelessness as we’ve come to know it.”

HUD says the competition to award the grants for this fiscal year was more competitive than ever before on both the national and state levels.“We have already shown that working together to provide care, case management, and needed shelter can drastically impact homelessness in a community,” said Tammye H. Treviño, Regional Administrator.   “Our CoC partners throughout the Southwest are working hard every day to address the challenges of homelessness, helping to get lives back on track and housing families in need.”

Another set of awards were given away in March.