Increasing Housing Options for Survivors
Cloudburst is helping to ensure HUD resources are utilized to effectively address survivors’ housing needs; for example, creating safe and confidential access to homeless services through HUD’s Continuums of Care (CoC) and considering survivors’ needs in the HOME Investment Partnerships American Rescue Plan (HOME-ARP) program allocation planning.
 Supporting Survivor Access to Homeless Services Through CoCs
Cloudburst is:
- Promoting effective implementation of the HUD CoC Domestic Violence Bonus funding to establish projects that serve households fleeing domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and human trafficking.
- Helping CoCs engage new, grassroots, culturally specific victim service providers through capacity-building and thoughtful onboarding to provide safe housing for survivors.
- Training communities on promising practices, facilitating learning opportunities with national subject matter experts, and coordinating cross-jurisdictional peer exchanges.
- Partnering with the National Network to End Domestic Violence to ensure CoC and victim service provider (VSP) policies and procedures are in compliance with VAWA to provide survivor confidentiality.
 Incorporating Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, and Human Trafficking Survivor Needs in HOME-ARP Planning
HOME-ARP provides $5 billion of supplemental HOME funds to assist individuals or households who are homeless or at risk of homelessness and other vulnerable populations by providing housing, rental assistance, supportive services, and non-congregate shelter. These funds are awarded to participating jurisdictions (PJs), that include states and local governments and can support people fleeing or attempting to flee domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, or human trafficking.
Cloudburst is working with several local communities across the country to develop their plans for allocating their HOME-ARP funds and consider survivors’ needs. By engaging VSPs in the planning process through consultations and organizational surveys, analyzing prevalence data and victim service program data, and utilizing interviews with advocates, the full breadth of survivor needs is reflected in the assessment and planning of these historic HOME-ARP funds. Our team also provides PJs with a range of safe housing models and promising practices to consider in developing their approach.
Amplifying Women’s Voices and Promoting Evidence-Based Strategies to Address GBV
In 2022, our Global Development team executed an impact evaluation examining the effects of a land titling program on perceptions of land tenure security and conflict in Burkina Faso. To make women’s experiences visible, our team included a survey module completed privately and exclusively by the wives of male heads of households. This design gave women an opportunity to express their opinions on tenure security, conflict, and household decision-making, and facilitated a more nuanced understanding of program ou tcomes for women. The evaluation found that the project and its theory of change did not explicitly account for, or seek to change, the deeply embedded social norms enforcing the domination of land governance by men.
Cloudburst recently worked with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on a literature and evidence review regarding barriers to women's political participation and leadership globally, as well as an evidence review on women's participation in accountable political systems at the local level for USAID/Kosovo. These reviews identify both best practices and knowledge gaps, which will help USAID guide resources more effectively toward programming and research initiatives that will contribute to closing the gender gap in political participation. (Inset: a woman works on land titling in Burkina Faso.)
Providing Grants Management Support for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Family Violence Prevention Services Act Program
In 2021 and 2022, Cloudburst and Potomac Haven provided U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration of Children and Families (ACF) Family Violence Prevention Services Act (FVPSA) program with grants management and data analysis services to support the implementation of $1 billion dollars in American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding to FVPSA grantees to strengthen sexual assault and culturally specific GBV programs. Check out the FVPSA Learning Portal to see the grants management tools and resources the Cloudburst GBV team helped create.
Cloudburst Partners with NNEDV
Each newsletter will feature a valued partner: in this edition, we recognize Debbie Fox (dfox) from the National Network to End Domestic Violence (NNEDV), who brings deep expertise on how homeless and GBV programs can effectively meet VAWA and HUD reporting requirements. VAWA and FVPSA contain strong confidentiality provisions that limit the sharing of victims' personally identifying information, including entering information into public records and databases such as Homeless Management Information Systems utilized by HUD CoCs. Sometimes communities see this as a limitation, and as a result, the homeless and victim service systems operate in silos and survivors are unable to access the full range of housing options.
Dfox co-facilitated a community training with Cloudburst to clarify VAWA and HUD requirements and share evidence-based models and national best practices to inform their program development. Often, these challenges across the homeless/housing and victim service sectors feel very specific to the communities wrestling with them, but dfox encourages collaboration and partnerships that can bring about creative safe housing solutions for survivors while maintaining data confidentiality.
Dfox has worked in the domestic and sexual violence movement for over 30 years with a focus on domestic violence population-specific housing and economic justice programming. In her role, dfox works tirelessly with the state domestic violence coalitions and national GBV organizations to advocate for survivor safety and housing options. Cloudburst is grateful to have dfox and NNEDV as a trusted partner in our work supporting communities to create safe housing access for survivors.
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environmental resilience. Our GBV practice area harnesses our deep expertise in housing, global development, environment and climate resiliency, and public health to advance equitable, survivor-centered solutions for the prevention and response to GBV. This work is aligned with our mission and is grounded in our belief that practical, innovative, and equitable GBV solutions to help nonprofits and government and non-governmental entities must include and be informed by survivors themselves. 
Educating HUD Grantees on the New Right to Report Crime and Emergencies From One’s Home Provision (34 U.S.C. 12495)
