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.

HUD Releases Renewable Energy Toolkit

~ Eric Oberdorfer ~ Leave a comment

HUD recently released their Renewable Energy Toolkit to help recipients of HUD Community Planning and Development (CPD) grants to integrate renewable energies into their affordable housing programs. These include groups receiving HOME, CDBG, HOPWA, or ESG dollars. The toolkit walks users through 4 phases of incorporating renewable energy in their affordable housing developments: feasibility analyses, prioritizing and soliciting renewable energy projects, project evaluation and selection, and implementation. HUD hopes to encourage grantees to integrate renewable energy into more affordable housing developments as it helps to maintain affordability through reduced energy costs, which can facilitate improved operations and maintenance.

HOTMA Signed by President, NAHRO Releases In-Depth Summary

~ Eric Oberdorfer ~ Leave a comment

On July 29, President Obama signed the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act (HOTMA/HR 3700) officially making it law. HUD is now in charge of implementation. The law provides common-sense reforms to our industry and contains numerous provisions supported by NAHRO. NAHRO will be working closely with HUD as they begin the implementation process.

On August 2, NAHRO released an In-Depth Summary (members only) of the law and the provisions found within. NAHRO also previously released a one-pager (members only) of the specific provisions NAHRO has supported and promoted over the years.

We encourage all NAHRO members to thank their Senators and Representatives for getting this important piece of legislation passed. More information on how to thank your members of Congress can found at NAHRO’s Advocacy Action Center as a part of our August Advocacy Month.

On a personal note, we’d also like to thank all of you for helping get this passed. Your outreach and efforts paid off, and we wouldn’t be at juncture without all of you!

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.

HUD Holds MTW Expansion Teleconferences

~ Eric Oberdorfer ~ Leave a comment

HUD held its first two MTW Research Advisory Committee meetings on Tuesday, June 26 and Thursday, June 28. As stipulated by the FY 2016 Omnibus, the MTW Research Advisory Committee is tasked to advise HUD on how to move forward with the MTW expansion, especially with respect to specific policies to test in the expansion. The committee discussed potential policy proposals for each of the three statutory MTW objectives: cost effectiveness, self-sufficiency, and housing choice. On Tuesday, the committee discussed potential housing choice policies to implement through the expansion, and on Thursday, the committee discussed cost effectiveness and self-sufficiency. Thirty minutes per call were allotted to public comment. NAHRO staff commented on both calls, and transcripts of those comments can be found here and here (members only).

The committee will reconvene in person in Washington, DC sometime in mid-to-late August or early September. NAHRO staff plan to attend the in-person meeting.

Additional background information on the MTW Expansion can be found here (members only). NAHRO’s MTW policy proposals and research evaluation recommendations can be found here (members only).

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.