Monday, July 18, 2011

Hardest Hit Update from Council Meeting: Only 2,100 of 6,000 Mortgage Payment Program Applicants Are Actually Getting Payments Made.

At Oregon Housing Council meeting last Friday OHSI staff indicated that 2,100 Oregon families were now their having monthly loan payments made by OHSI. This is out of a universe of nearly 6,000 applications that were accepted by the Jan 14 deadline (six months ago) for the Mortgage Payment Assistance Program. 

OHCS staff indicated that US Treasury reviewers said recently that Oregon was ahead of other states (an Orlando Sentinel story HERE has data on Florida and several other states). OHCS staff also indicated they have heard (I think understandably) complaints about slowness in processing MPA application to the point where payment starts. 

No information about any specific recommendations or findings from the US Treasury review was presented at the meeting.

At the meeting OHSI staff did distribute hard copy of a Treasury blog post HERE, highlighting the HH work of an Oregon non profit partner, NEDCO.

While not mentioned at the Council meeting, Oregon's FIRST quarterly report on demographics and location of participants through June 30th should be available on line next Monday, as it has already been sent to US Treasury. 

A previous similar report from Michigan is HERE; Ohio HERE; North Carolina HERE; and from Illinois HERE.

Also not mentioned was the roll out date for the Deschutes and Jackson county principal reduction/refinance program that had been previously scheduled for launch by June 1. (My May 11 post about this program can be found HERE).

It's worth noting that the Housing Council has no formal role in the structure or operation/oversight of the Hardest Hit Fund in Oregon, so the OHSI briefing might be viewed as a courtesy.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

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