Monday, November 2, 2015

Big Deal-Home Forward Gearing Up for Annual Update to Moving to Work Plan.

Home Forward's Board of Commissioners next work session is Wednesday November 4; packet HERE includes the draft MTW plan.

A "Community Partners" meeting is set for November 16th, a public hearing on November 17th, with Board approval scheduled for their December 15th meeting.

If your interested in the well being of low income renter households, and especially minorities, the elderly, and persons with disabilities in Portland and Multomah county I can't think of a more valuable document to read and understand. Yes, it's long, because it covers a LOT of territory.

What I Would Like to Better Understand: 
  1. How much HF policies provide both tenant based and project based voucher tenants with protections against rising market rents, including a clearer understanding of how one qualifies for a "hardship" and the frequency with which hardship requests are being made and granted.  I also would like to understand the timing of effective dates for HF approved higher rents in response to hardship requests.
  2. I would like to see and better understand HF data on rent burden distributions [not just averages] for both the tenant based and project based vouchers. The MTW plan has language that talks about 50% or 70% of income rent burdens as being acceptable in some circumstances, and I would like to see how many and what percentage of both tenant based and project based voucher holders are actually paying more than 30% of income for rent.
  3. I would like to hear more about the additional costs to HF and HUD of increasing voucher rents in the face of increasing market rents. 
  4. I would like to see what the voucher turn back rate is in the most recent months vs historic turn back rates.
  5. I would like to see when HF plans to adopt new payment standards, once HUD publishes final FMR's in November. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

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