what happens to hud if government shutdown february 15?
The authorities shutdown means that the long-leaking roof of San Jose Manor II Apartments won't exist replaced someday soon, says Alma Ballard, who oversees the building for low-income senior citizens in Jacksonville, Florida.
"That's definitely not going to happen," said Ballard, executive director of the nonprofit Family Housing Direction, who said that water has at times dripped into some residents' rooms.
Ballard said Family unit Housing Management had been saving up for a new roof for the fifty-unit government-subsidized property, just had to put the plans on hold because its contract with the Department of Housing and Urban Evolution was still in the process of being renewed when the shutdown began. The company never received its December and January payments from HUD, totaling about $40,000, immediately putting the belongings under fiscal strain.
The few federal employees left at HUD have been scouring the books, looking for a final-minute solution to fund hundreds of affordable housing contracts that have expired under the shutdown.
More than 200 of the contracts that expired in Dec are for properties, like San Jose Estate II, that provide rental assistance for the elderly, co-ordinate to LeadingAge, an association for nonprofit providers of crumbling services. Known as Section 202, the plan houses most 400,000 depression-income elderly people as part of HUD'south Section 8 Project-Based Rental Help as well as a separate HUD program.
These tenants are peculiarly at risk during the shutdown, says Linda Couch, vice president of housing policy for LeadingAge. Despite its scramble for a ready, HUD has non been able to observe any stopgap funding to support the Section 202 landlords whose contracts expired in December, Brian Montgomery, HUD's acting deputy secretary, told Burrow in a call on Midweek evening, according to her account.
While HUD has identified buckets of coin that could potentially be used to shore upwardly other low-income rental assistance contracts, including those for disabled adults, HUD has not been able to do so for the elderly housing program because of restrictions on how previously allocated funds can exist spent, co-ordinate to Couch's notes from her chat with Montgomery, currently HUD'south 2d in command.
"HUD has its back up against the wall and has really no good options," said Couch, who fears the lack of funding could harm some of the near frail and vulnerable Americans.
HUD did not directly address NBC News' questions about the shortfall of funds for the elderly.
"HUD is actively resolving issues with these pending contracts with owners and identifying available resources for payment," Jereon Brown, a HUD spokesman, said in a argument.
The affected properties include San Jose Manor Ii Apartments, whose direction has already resorted to its reserve funding to brand upwardly for the missing HUD payments — funds that information technology had been planning to use for replacing the roof, a particular business organisation in the hurricane-prone expanse, Ballard said.
Affected residents include Shirley Henderson, 69, who non but receives housing merely also medical aid at the building, thanks to a mobile wellness unit that checks her glucose and claret pressure, helping to manage her diabetes.
"How long volition it still be going on? Will something happen so that life can go back to the mode it's supposed to be?" said Henderson, tearing up as she described the other families across the country affected past the shutdown, whether because of missing paychecks or stalled dwelling purchases.
Henderson pays $232 in rent every calendar month, which is well-nigh a quarter of her Social Security check, and she doesn't know where she'd live if she had to go out the San Jose apartments.
Ballard said the management is doing everything possible to shield its residents, and would ultimately appeal to the property's sponsor, the Roman Catholic Diocese of St. Augustine, for a loan if information technology runs out of reserve funds. She said no tenants will be evicted as long as they go along paying rent.
Ballard added that it's not unusual to experience delays in renewing contracts with HUD, so it wasn't until afterwards New year's day's Day that she realized in that location might be a problem, as an $18,000 HUD payment she expected was not in the account.
"Nosotros came back to piece of work and said, 'There's no coin,'" she said. "What'southward going to happen to us?"
San Jose Manor II Apartments has most $sixty,000 in reserves, enough to cover about 2 months' worth of basic operating and maintenance costs, including utilities, staff payroll and trash removal. If the shutdown lasts that long, cypher would be left for emergency expenses, much less capital repairs like replacing the roof, Ballard said.
"If something major bankrupt, I wouldn't accept the funds to replace it — a refrigerator or a oestrus pump or a stove," she said.
And accessing the reserve funds tin can exist a lengthy, bureaucratic process, Ballard said. Many Section 8 backdrop pay into a reserve fund each calendar month, but they must become approval from HUD to access the money. With 95 percent of the workforce furloughed, the agency is extremely short-staffed.
"We're getting the brunt of it and accept to leap through all these hoops to serve our residents," said Ballard, who submitted paperwork that got shuffled through multiple HUD offices to access the funds. "This is only crazy — there should accept been some blazon of contingency funds."
On Wednesday, HUD sent a message to owners of properties whose contracts had expired, or were expiring in Jan, providing more than detailed instructions on how to asking reserve funds "if your property is not receiving payment or is experiencing an emergency situation," co-ordinate to HUD emails, which the department as well forwarded to affordable housing groups and industry associations.
But not all the afflicted backdrop have acceptable reserves to draw upon, said Burrow, with LeadingAge. "What'south the emergency relief mechanism for those communities?" she said, noting that Section 202 landlords are exclusively nonprofits that don't typically have piece of cake access to outside capital.
Firm Democrats have begun investigating HUD's management of the shutdown, criticizing the department's "failure" to salvage the expiring contracts ahead of fourth dimension and questioning what happened to $400 meg in backup funding for the Department viii rental help programme.
HUD has provided just a "slow trickle of data" about the contracts, which has fabricated things harder for landlords and tenants alike, according to Janel Doughten, associate director of the B'nai B'rith International Center for Senior Services, which has provided Section 202 housing for decades and operates backdrop from Arizona to New Jersey that house nigh 5,000 residents.
"It creates a sense of panic," said Mark Olshan, the eye's director and associate executive vice president of B'nai B'rith International. "If I go to my manager and say, 'What's happening?' they say, 'We don't know — we can't get ahold of our HUD office.' "
Dark-brown, the HUD spokesman, said earlier in the week that the agency was working hard to find money for the properties whose contracts had expired. In its Wednesday email to affected property owners, HUD said that in one case funding was restored, they would be reimbursed if they had fatigued from their reserves.
Since nonprofit organizations are mission-driven, they are peculiarly dedicated to ensuring that their residents are able to stay in their homes, Couch said. But the shutdown could strength them to make painful choices. "In the worst-case scenario, they will accept to question whether or non they tin stay in the affordable housing business concern," she said.
That could mean even fewer options for poor senior citizens. The waiting list for San Jose Manor Ii Apartments is already one year to one-and-a-half years long, according to Ballard, who said that if residents were forced to leave, they wouldn't have anywhere else to go. "They would alive on the street," she said. "There's nothing for them."
CORRECTION (January. eleven, 2019, iii:36 p.m.): An earlier version of this article incorrectly described HUD'south Section 202 programme for low-income senior citizens. Section 202 does not solely fall nether HUD's Section eight Project-Based Rental Assistance program; it falls under both Section 8 and a HUD programme known equally Project Rental Assistance Contracts.
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Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/there-s-no-money-shutdown-freezes-hud-funds-low-income-n957386
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