Day: April 27, 2021

Landlord Strategy Guidebook for PHAs Updated

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has updated their Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Landlord Strategy Guidebook for PHAs. New chapters have been posted on monetary incentives and reimbursement funds, inspections, matching local rental markets, and partnerships. The guidebook provides suggestions and ideas for PHAs looking to recruit new landlords and retain current landlords to the HCV program.

The guidebook has the following chapters:

The Department’s HCV Landlord Resources webpage can be found here.

The full HCV Landlord Strategy Guidebook for PHAs can be found here.

Guidance on Public Housing Fund Shortfall Funding Released

~ Eric Oberdorfer ~ Leave a comment

On April 26, HUD released Notice PIH-2021-12, “Implementation of Public Housing Operating Fund Shortfall Funding from Federal Fiscal Year (FFY) 2021 Appropriations.” The FY 2021 Appropriations Act included $25 million for PHAs that experience, or are at risk of, financial shortfalls. The funding was provided to mitigate the risk of financial shortfalls among PHAs and was directed to prioritize the funding to PHAs with 249 or fewer public housing units that are determined to be experiencing shortfalls and have less than one-month of reserves before allocating funds to larger PHAs. MTW Agencies are eligible to apply as well.

For the purposes of this Notice, HUD defines having a financial shortfall as having less than two months of operating expenses held in reserve. The eligibility for the Shortfall Funding Program will be based on the amount of Monthly Operating Reserves (MOR) a PHA has according to their most recent audited or unaudited FDS submission. A list of agencies that fit this shortfall definition can be found here.

PHAs that are included on the list of eligible PHAs described above may apply for Shortfall funding by completing the Shortfall Funding Application found in Appendix A of the Notice and submitting it via e-mail to 2021ShortfallFunding@hud.gov no later than midnight (Eastern Time) on June 4, 2021. The application must be submitted by the PHA’s Executive Director or other authorized representative and include the PHA name and PHA code (e.g., CA001), as well as the contact information for HUD follow-up if necessary.

The Notice can be found here.

HUD Updates HCV Dashboard

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

The Department has updated the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) dashboard. The HCV dashboard presents visualizations of HCV program statistics based on most recently available data taken from, among other places, the Voucher Management System (VMS). The updated dashboard now includes pages on leasing changes, percentages of HCV programs devoted to special purpose vouchers, leasing potential, project-based voucher portfolios, comparing budget and reserves between two programs, and comparing leasing and per unit cost (PUC) between two programs.

The dashboard shows data both in the national aggregate and by individual PHA.

In addition, the Department has also updated the “HCV Dashboard User Guide & Data Dictionary.”

Finally, the Department has posted a YouTube video discussing and explaining the expansion.

The HCV Data Dashboard can be found here.