New CRS Report on Federal Spending Trends

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

The Congressional Research Service recently created a report titled “Federal Benefits and Services for People with Low Income: Overview of Spending Trends, FY2008-FY2015.” The report is the latest in a series that attempts to identify and discuss programs and services oriented toward low-income populations, while focusing on aggregate spending trends.

The report contains some interesting charts that show how spending on housing compares to other categories of federal spending. The chart below from page 6 of the report shows spending by category. Notice that health care spending dwarfs the other categories, while “housing and development” is in the middle.

Federal-Spending-Chart-FY2015-CRS-Report

Read the full report here.

HUD Offering $2 million in ROSS Grants to Help Students Navigate College and Continuing Education Financial Aid Assistance

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

On August 2, HUD announced $2 million in grants to “help low-income families and young people apply for federal aid for college and other post-secondary educational opportunities.” The program is being funded through the Resident Opportunities and Self Sufficiency (ROSS) Program. The program will allow up to six public housing agencies (PHAs) to support “Education Navigators.”

HUD’s ROSS for Education Program is known as Project SOAR (Students + Opportunities + Achievements = Results).  It will “support hundreds of young people between the ages of 15 – 20 to apply for [the] U.S. Department of Education’s Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).” HUD is also working with the Department of Education to share data about FAFSA completion and is working with the White House’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Team to develop methods to increase completion rates of the FAFSA among students with housing assistance.

Read HUD’s full press release here.

Read HUD’s Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) here.

Read more about how behavioral economics can be used to “nudge” applicants receiving housing assistance to seek Federal Student Aid here.

Moving On from Supportive Housing Toolkit

~ Jenny Hsu ~ Leave a comment

Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH) has developed a new Moving On Toolkit for supportive housing providers, Continuums of Care, PHAs, state and local government agencies and other organizations that would like to plan, develop, sustain and evaluate Moving On initiatives within their communities. Moving On initiatives provide rental subsidy and transition assistance to tenants who are able and want to move out of supportive housing and into a new apartment. The toolkit outlines the various phases and steps in the Moving On process and offers numerous links and helpful resources, including descriptions of previous or existing Moving On projects and practical tools or templates developed by implementing organizations. According to CSH, the fundamental goal of Moving On is to promote the highest levels of independence and choice for tenants. HUD has previously provided public support for Moving On but current initiatives only exist on a small scale through scattered pilots.

Administration Announces Steep Decline in Veteran Homelessness

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

Today–HUD, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) announced that the number of veterans experiencing homelessness in the United States has declined significantly since 2010. According to HUD’s Point-in-Time (PIT) estimates, there has been a 47 percent decrease in the number of veterans experiencing homelessness since 2010 and a 17 percent decrease since 2015.

HUD believes that this decline is a function of partnerships between HUD and VA, USICH, and other partners at all levels of government (i.e., federal, state, and local) and the HUD-VASH program. The partnerships were a result of Opening Doors, the federal strategic plan to prevent and end homelessness.

Read HUD’s full press release here.

Read more about Opening Doors here.

View HUD’s PIT Estimates of Veteran Homelessness in the U.S. here.

Closing the Digital Divide Guide for Financial Institutions

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

Our friends at the National Housing Conference have informed us that the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has published a guide titled “Closing the Digital Divide A Framework for Meeting CRA Obligation.” The guide explains how financial institutions can meet Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) obligations by helping to close a community’s digital divide.

The full guide can be read here.

TAC’s Section 8 Made Simple Guide

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

The Technical Assistance Collaborative has published a Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program guide titled “Section 8 Made Simple – Special Edition: Using the Housing Choice Voucher Program to End Chronic Homelessness.”

Thanks to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities for bringing this to our attention.

HUD Updates Notice on Prioritizing the Chronically Homeless in Permanent Supportive Housing

~ Jenny Hsu ~ Leave a comment

On July 25, 2016, HUD published Notice CPD-16-11 entitled, “Notice Prioritizing Persons Experiencing Chronic Homelessness and Other Vulnerable Homeless Persons in Permanent Supportive Housing.” This notice supersedes the previous Notice CPD-14-012, and provides guidance to Continuums of Care (CoC) and recipients of CoC Program funding for permanent supportive housing (PSH) regarding the order in which eligible households should be served in all CoC Program-funded PSH. This Notice reflects the new definition of chronically homeless as amended by the HUD Final Rule on Defining “Chronically Homeless” and updates the orders of priority that were established under the prior Notice.

CoCs that previously adopted the orders of priority established in Notice CPD-14-012 and who received points for having done so in the FY 2015 CoC Program Competition are encouraged to update their written standards to reflect the updates to the orders of priority as established in this updated Notice. CoCs that have not previously adopted the orders of priority established in Notice CPD- 14-012 are also encouraged to incorporate the orders of priority included in this Notice into their written standards.

Access Notice CPD-16-11 here.

Learn more about HUD’s Final Rule on Defining “Chronically Homeless” here (NAHRO login required).

Better Know a HUD Official

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) has published a message from Richard Green, Senior Advisor on Housing Finance in Edge, their online magazine. He makes five points, but there are two that are particularly interesting (and are related to the Federal Government) and are reproduced below:

The federal government relies too much on obsolete technology.

. . . Within HUD, for example, the FHA program relies on systems that are driven by coding in COBOL, a mainframe (!) language developed in 1959 (!!). Because almost no one uses COBOL anymore, our university computer science departments don’t train students in its use. As COBOL programmers retire, it will become impossible to find people to maintain the system.

On a more personal level, I was stunned to learn that my HUD PC had a 32-bit operating system in a world where 64-bit system have been around for PCs for 13 years. As a practical matter, 32 bit systems are limited in the amount of data they can analyze, whereas 64 bit systems are nearly unlimited. Many doing HUD work rely on large data sets (for example the Public Use Microsamples of the Census and the American Community Survey). The current standard for operating systems makes it relatively easy to use these datasets; the old standard requires compromises.

Few people know who the third most powerful person is in the Federal Government.

My guess is that the name Shaun Donovan is not well known outside the Beltway. But pretty much nothing gets done without the approval of the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Assuming the most powerful person in the Federal Government  is the President, and third most powerful person is OMB Director, then who’s the second most powerful person? The Speaker of the House? The Senate Majority Leader? The Vice-President?

Read the full message here.

 

MTW Expansion Committee Conference Call and Summary of Policies

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

As mentioned in a prior blog post, the Moving to Work (MTW) Expansion Committee Conference Call is occurring now [Edit: The call ended at 4 pm]. HUD has also posted a summary of the policy proposals it has received to be potentially studied in MTW cohorts. Here are the numbers to call in:

  • United States –  (800) 230-1766;
  • Outside the United States – (612) 288-0329; and
  • Persons with hearing impairments – (800) 977-8339 and providing the FRS operator with the conference call toll-free number: (800) 230-1766.

The call is until 4 pm today. The next call will be at the following time:

  • July 28, 2016 – Cost-Effectiveness and Incentives to Increase Self-Sufficiency for Families with Children (1 pm to 4 pm).

Read the summary of policy proposals here.

UPCS-V Update and Timeline

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

Earlier today, HUD REAC had a conference call with PHAs that volunteered to be a part of the UPCS-V Demonstration. In the conference call, HUD shared additional information on the Demonstration including a timeline moving forward. The Demonstration has 173 agencies from 41 states, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (31% of vouchers are represented in the Demonstration). HUD took NAHRO’s suggestion in its comment letter and has accepted small and very small agencies, but is still looking for additional agencies to apply.

If your agency is still interested in applying, please provide the following information to UPCSV@hud.gov:

  • Name of PHA;
  • PHA Address;
  • Name of Point of Contact (POC);
  • Phone Number of POC; and
  • Email Address of POC.

Here is the tentative timeline for the demonstration moving forward.

Currently

  • Prepare for PHAs starting August 1st;
  • Release the software;
  • Update the decision trees; and
  • Protocol Document release [should be in the next week or two].

August

  • OED to shadow HQS inspections [for first wave of 13 or 14 chosen PHAs; PHAs that are chosen for this wave should already be informed];
  • Start training PHAs on UPCS-V August 29th to September 31st;
  • PIH Listening Sessions for PHAs only, scheduled at various locations around the country; and
  • Public outreach presentation on UPCS-V.

September – December

  • Train PHAs [HUD will train PHA inspectors who will start performing inspections at this time];
  • Completion of online training tool;
  • PIH Listening Sessions; and
  • Other presentations on UPCS-V.

January – Summer 2017

  • Continue training PHAs.

Additional questions about the demonstration can be mailed to OED@hud.gov.

As noted in the timeline, a revised version of the UPCS-V protocol will be published in the next week or two at the REAC OED website. The slides from today’s call will also be made available on the OED website.

NAHRO is following the Demonstration very closely and will continue to bring you the latest updates.