Saturday, November 19, 2011

Update, CORRECTED: Income Recertification Staff Cost Savings From Switch to 3 Year Cycle: Really Less than $5 Per Household Annually?

 Update: Moving Forward advises that visitors to their prior hapdx.org website will be switched to their new HomeForward.org website.  Text has been change below.

CORRECTION: 
NLIHC staff were kind enough to take the time to advise me that the regulatory relief provisions I referenced below were NOT included in the bill that passed the House and Senate. 

I must have pulled the wrong version of the bill. I have corrected the text below and included the link to the FINAL version of the bill.

Information on projected savings remains accurate. 

My apologies for the confusion.

-------
The recently passed HUD FY 2012 appropriations bill [HERE] DID NOT ALLOW housing authorities  a switch to a 3 year cycle for income recertifications for those on "fixed incomes".  Presumably this would have included the elderly and persons with disabilities.

However, Portland's Home Forward (previously known as HAP) has the same plan for a 3 year cycle in their HUD approved FY 2012 Moving to Work Plan. (HERE)

Savings of Less than $5 Per Household Per Year?
As part of that plan, Moving Forward projected staff time savings by switching to a 3 year cycle for the elderly and disabled. As the table from the plan [pg 18] pasted below shows, the staff savings for 5,663 disabled and seniors are projected at only $24,800 a year.  Doing the math it would appear that Home Forward has projected a savings of only $4.38 per household per year ( $24,800/5,663=$4.38) as a result of switching to a 3 year recertification cycle.

Because this estimate is based on a projected staff time of less than a half hour per year, [ 5,663 households/ 2,832 hours= .5 hours per review] I am wondering if this includes all the staff time spent on this activity (mailing, interviewing, checking automated systems, etc). 

I would be interested in other housing authorities adding comments about their projected staff time per review and their hourly staff costs. 

PS . Visitors to the previous hapdx.org website will now with sent to the the new website: homeforward.org

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

No comments:

Post a Comment