Oregon Senate Hearing, HH Items: 2,000 Completed Apps.(In 5 days?)

During Oregon Senate hearing today, OHSI Director Kaplan said:

• That there had been 35,000 visitors to their website, 4,400 applications taken to date, with 2,000 applications completed. 
• Face to face interviews with applicants will start tomorrow. 
• After mortgage payment assistance program ends on January 14 there will be 36 separate lottery draws conducted to select those to receive assistance in each county.

He also said that other states:

• Had chosen to do quarterly income verifications, but Oregon chose monthly verification process.
• Had chosen to receive partial payments from homeowners, and match them with partial payments from HH funds, but Oregon chose not to because of "scary" administrative complexity of doing so. (BTW: Matching payments were used by lenders for old Section 235 program).

Kaplan also said that Oregon will be using "new hire" list from Employment Department and unemployment records to help insure continuing loss of income during period receiving Mortgage Payment Assistance. (I interpreted remarks to indicate that as long as income continued to be 25% below former level, homeowner would continue to receive full mortgage payment, so appears that some increase in income would still be acceptable--someone PLEASE correct me if I am wrong).

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.