::NJCDA

njcda.net - Home

Home

About Us

Directory

Event Gallery

Home

NACCED Alert

Written by NJCDA Administrator
Tuesday, 13 December 2011
The following information comes from Steve Johnson, Director of the Entitlement Communities Division, Office of Block Grant Assistance, HUD Headquarters. HUD Clarifies Disaster Rules on ‘Duplication of Benefits’ The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development issued guidance on November 16 to help state and local governments streamline their HUD-funded disaster recovery programs and ease the burden of complying with federal law prohibiting so-called ‘duplication of benefits.’ HUD’s new guidance clarifies existing rules and offers states consistent direction on this issue. For more information, see HUD Press Release 11-271 at: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releas es_media_advisories/2011/HUDNo.11-271 HUD Announces 2011 Sustainable Communities Awards U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan announced the recipients of the 2011 Sustainable Communities Grants, totaling nearly $96 million on November 21. Twenty-seven communities and organizations will receive Community Challenge grants and 29 regional areas will receive Regional Planning grants. The goal of HUD's Sustainable Communities grants is to help communities and regions improve their economic competitiveness by connecting housing with good jobs, quality schools and transportation. For additional information, see HUD Press Release 11-274 at: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2011/HUDNo.11-274. HUD Launches Web Tool to Connect Best Community Development Efforts to Private, Philanthropic Dollars In an effort to dramatically boost public/private partnerships and philanthropic support for strong community development plans across the country, the Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) has unveiled a new web feature to spotlight grantee and top-tier applicant efforts to create opportunity and revitalize regions, communities and neighborhoods around the country. Featured at www.hud.gov, the web tool displays contact information, partnerships, maps and funders for the most robust proposals to HUD’s flagship community development initiatives, allowing users to easily find and support local transformation efforts. ;For more information, see HUD Press Release 11-278 at: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/press_releases_media_advisories/2011/HUDNo.11-278. Office of Block Grant Assistance Personnel Update: OBGA welcomes Matt Allman, who joined HUD as a Presidential Management Fellow on August 15. Matt graduated from the Florida State University College of Law and has worked with a variety of private, non-profit, and government entities in northwest Florida. Ryan Flanery and Jim Yeardon have taken new positions in OBGA’s Disaster Recovery and Special Issues Division as CPD Specialists working with the DRGR system. Jim and Ryan both previously worked as CPD Specialists on the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) team. Finally, OBGA bids a fond farewell to Sam Blum, Financial Management Specialist in the Financial Management Division; Sam has accepted a private sector position in his hometown of Seattle. Entitlement Communities FY 2012 Entitlement CDBG Participations Finalized All CDBG Entitlement program participation decisions have now been finalized for FY 2012. For FY2011, there were 1169 entitlement grantees: 182 counties and 987 entitlement cities, including 31 cities in a joint agreement with an urban county. There are numerous changes for FY12, as indicated below: Accepts Entitlement status; previously non-entitled; no longer eligible for State CDBG: Palm Coast, FL Hendersonville, TN Henry County, GA Accepts Entitlement status in a Joint Agreement with Urban County; previously non-entitled; no longer eligible for State CDBG: Tinley Park, IL (joint with Cook County) Accepts Entitlement status in a Joint Agreement with Urban County; previously a participating jurisdiction in the Urban County: Lake Elsinore, CA (joint with Riverside County) Smyrna, GA (joint with Cobb County) Mansfield, TX (joint with Tarrant County) Redmond, WA (joint with King County) Accepts Entitlement status; ends previous Joint Agreement with Urban County: Yorba Linda, CA (formerly joint with Orange County) Roswell, GA (formerly joint with Fulton County) Federal Way, WA (formerly joint with King County) Accepts Entitlement status; previously a participating jurisdiction in an Urban County: Cathedral City, CA (exits Riverside County) Menifee, CA (exits Riverside County) Temecula, CA (exits Riverside County) Jupiter, FL (exits Palm Beach County) Wellington, FL (exits Palm Beach County) Weston, FL (exits Broward County) South Jordan, UT (exits Salt Lake County) Marysville, WA (exits Snohomish County) Changes status from Entitlement to Entitlement in a Joint Agreement with an Urban County: East Saint Louis, IL (joint with Saint Clair County) Relinquishes Entitlement status to become a participating jurisdiction in an Urban County: Pontiac, MI (Oakland County) Relinquishes Entitlement status; becomes non-entitled, eligible for State CDBG: Richardson, TX These decisions result in net gains of 1 urban county, 16 entitlement cities and 3 joint agreements compared to last year. For FY12 there will be 1186 entitlement jurisdictions: 183 urban counties and 1003 entitlement cities, the latter including 34 cities with joint agreements with a county. Including 50 states, 4 Insular Areas and 3 Hawaii non-entitlement counties, HUD will compute formula allocation amounts for 1243 places and execute grant agreements with 1209 grantees (57 non-entitlements and 1152 entitlements). Headquarters will compute final formula allocations as soon as HUD receives its apportionment of the FY12 appropriations from OMB. (The FY12 appropriations bill requires HUD to announce formula grant allocations within 60 days of enactment.) OMB Finalizes Changes to Metropolitan Statistical Area Standards: On June 28 and July 7, 2010, the Office of Management and Budget published revised standards for delineating Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas. OMB is responsible for designating Metropolitan Areas and Principal Cities thereof; this information is used by HUD to determine the potential eligibility of new entitlement cities and counties for the CDBG program. These revised standards will affect the CDBG program in two important ways: 1) OMB will not designate any new metropolitan areas or principal cities thereof until 2013, and thereafter will issue major updates to statistical areas every five years instead of annually. (OMB will continue to issue new metropolitan and micropolitan area designations on an annual basis, as needed. Readers are also reminded that Micropolitan Area designation has absolutely no bearing on eligibility for the En titlement CDBG program.) For the CDBG program, this means that for the next 1-2 years, the only way a local government will become newly eligible for CDBG Entitlement program participation will be by surpassing the 50,000 and 200,000 populations thresholds for cities and counties, respectively. For FY13 (and probably FY 14, depending on when OMB issues its 2013 updates), there will be no new Entitlement communities qualifying solely on the basis of being newly designated as a principal city of a metropolitan area. The next time point at which HUD will identify potential new Entitlement participants will be when the Census Bureau issues its 2011 Population Estimates in the summer of 2012. The revised OMB standards notice is available at: http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/assets/fedreg_2010/06282010_metro_standards-Complete.pdf Recovery Programs CDBG-R Program Status Update The latest PR-87 expenditure report is attached. As of November 28, 2011, 83.12% of CDBG-R funds have been drawn down nationally. (In comparison, the drawdown rate one year ago was 53.90%.) The median drawdown rate is 99.60%. Over $814 million of the $980 million has been drawn down. On a regional basis, the average drawdown rate is now over 77% among grantees in all HUD regions; regions I, II and X are over 90%. 551 grantees (out of 1167) are 100% drawn down. The State of Mississippi remains the largest 100% drawn grant. 111 more grantees are over 98% drawn. Only 65 of 1167 grantees (less than 6%) are below 50% drawn; these grants account for $48 million of the $142 million not yet drawn for the whole program. 16 of these are million-dollar-plus grants; see the table below for a listing. Detroit remains the largest grant still under 50% drawn. All states are now over 50% drawn down. Seven grantees have drawn down less than 10% of their funds. (See table below for a listing.) (Greeley, CO has jumped from 2% to 80% drawn.) New Orleans is the only million-dollar-plus grant still under 10% drawn. All but $21.8 million of funds have been funded to specific activities in IDIS. Three grantees have still funded less than 25% of their funds to specific activities in IDIS: Downey, CA; Macomb County, MI; New Orleans, LA. FINAL FISCAL YEAR 2012 FAIR MARKET RENTS RELEASED. HUD has published the 2012 Fair Market Rents on the HUD USER website. Effective October 1, 2011, these FMRs are used in the Housing Choice Voucher, the Moderate Rehabilitation, and the project-based voucher programs, as well as other programs that require location-specific economic data.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 13 December 2011 )
Read more...

NACCED Alert

Written by NJCDA Administrator

Wednesday, 16 November 2011

Conference Committee Approves FY 2012 HUD Funding; CDBG and HOME Cut Again; CDBG Planning and Administrative Cap Remains at 20%

A House-Senate conference committee has approved H.R. 2112, a compromise FY 2012 appropriations bill that would, among other things, fund HUD’s affordable housing and community development programs. Despite extensive lobbying by NACCED and others the conference committee continued a congressional assault on the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME Investment Partnership program (HOME) formula funding. The final version of the bill, which funds four other agencies, will be voted on by the full House and Senate by this coming Friday, November 18 th when the current Continuing Resolution expires. President Obama is expected to sign the bill.

The CDBG program was cut another 10% from this year’s $3.3 billion to $2.948 billion. However, in a victory NACCED and others convinced the conference committee to reject the original House bill’s 50% reduction in CDBG’s planning and administrative cap. House staff had argued that grantees shouldn’t be permitted to use 25% of each dollar for planning and program administration. Rather more funding should go to projects. The same staff also expressed concern that CDBG planning and administration funds were being used to administer other federal programs such as HOME and ESG. NACCED argued successfully that planning and administration is more than simply administering the CDBG program. Among other things it supports the consolidating planning process, environmental reviews, affirmatively furthering fair housing, oversight of subgrantees and contractors and compliance with other statutes such as Davis-Bacon. We also s uccessfully argued that of the $601.8 million used for planning and administration by all grantees in FY 2012, only $1.8 million was used for other federal program administration principally HOME. The report accompanying the bill directs the General Accountability Office to issue a report on how communities use CDBG funds, and it further directs HUD to report on "… how much CDBG funding is used as matching funds for other federal programs, including which programs are being matched, in what amounts, for what purposes, whether other funds are leveraged and any other relevant data.”

The conference committee-approved version of the bill provides that up to $300 million in CDBG formula funds may be used by HUD as funding for disaster relief and long-term recovery in presidentially-declared disaster areas in 2011. This is the first-time that Congress has cut funds from any federal program to offset the cost of disaster assistance. Congress reserved billions in funding in last August’s debt ceiling agreement for disaster assistance in the wake of Hurricane Irene. However, some members of the House Republican caucus have insisted that, despite the debt ceiling agreement provision, disaster funding under CDBG must be offset and the conferees agreed. The bill also includes authority for $240 million in Section 108 loan guarantees.

The HOME program was cut 37% in the bill from this year’s $1.6 billion to $1 billion, the direct result of a series of one-sided and damaging articles in the Washington Post last May and as recently as last week. They were sharply critical of HUD for its lack of oversight with respect to projects that were "stalled.” In the report accompanying the legislation the conferees direct HUD to provides a report to the appropriations committees a report "…on how it is monitoring and evaluating grantee performance, including how participating jurisdictions get approval to restart a stalled or cancelled. The legislative language in the bill provides that there is to be no reduction in the threshold amounts for receiving a direct grant. Under the HOME statute the $750,000 threshold for a direct grant is reduced to $337,500 whenever the appropriation falls below $1.5 billion. The bill lan guage further requires repayment of any HOME funds for projects not completed within four years of commitment. This deadline can be extended by HUD for an additional year if failure to complete the project is beyond the control of the participating jurisdiction. In addition, a grantee must certify that it has conducted an underwriting review, assessed developer capacity and fiscal soundness, examined the neighborhood market to ensure adequate need for each project, and, in the case of a Community Housing Development Organizations determined that it has demonstrated development experience before committing HUD funds. Finally, any HOME-funded homeownership units that cannot be sold to eligible households six months after completion must be converted to rental housing. These requirements are substantially the same as long-awaited new HOME rule that is under congressional review.

Under the legislation HUD must notify grantees of their allocations under the CDBG, HOME, ESG and HOPWA programs with 60 days of the bill’s enactment, a provision strongly advocated by NACCED and others.

Homeless housing assistance grants are funded at $1.9 billion, the same level as FY 2011. No less than $250 million of the total is for the Emergency Solutions Grant program, $1.59 million is for the Continuum of Care competition, including sufficient funding to renew all rent subsidy contracts and $7 million is for the national homeless data analysis project. In the report accompanying the bill the conferees criticize the lack of regulations implementing the H.E.A.R.T.H. homeless housing program consolidation. Regulations implementing the ESG and expanded definition of "homelessness” are being released by published by HUD as this Alert is being written.

According to a press release from the House Appropriations Committee, the conferees provided $17.2 billion for Section 8 tenant-based rent subsidy contracts, an amount sufficient to renew all of them. Funding for renewals of expiring Section 8 project-based rent subsidy contracts is set at $9.34 billion, up from the FY 2011 funding level of $9.26 billion. The bill also includes $75 million in Veterans Affairs Supporting (VASH) vouchers.

The public housing capital fund gets $1.85 billion for FY 2012, a significant cut over the FY 2011 level of $2.04 billion. In addition, the public housing operating fund gets $3.96 billion, down substantially from the FY 2011 level of $4.62 billion. However, public housing agencies can offset the cut by using $750 million in reserve funds they have on hand. In addition, HUD is given authority, but no funding, for a Rental Assistance Demonstration program that was requested by the Obama Administration. The demonstration is intended to develop new ways to recapitalize public housing.

The bill provides $120 million for the Obama Administration’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative for the demolition and replacement of severely distressed public and other assisted housing. Congress appropriated $99.8 million in FY 2011 for the HOPE VI program, of which Choice Neighborhoods is an expansion. No funding is provided for the Sustainable Communities Initiative.

Finally the legislation provides $45 million in housing counseling assistance, down from the $60 million in the Senate version of the bill. No funding was provided in FY 2011. In addition, the Section 202 elderly housing program gets $374 million, down from the FY 2011 level of $399 million and the Section 811 disabled housing program gets $165 million, up from $149.7 million in FY 2012.

NACCED Alert

Written by NJCDA Administrator

Thursday, 03 November 2011

Senate Passes Appropriations "Minibus;” Includes Funding for HUD Programs

By a vote of 69-30 the Senate has passed a $128 billion "minibus” appropriations bill that wrapped three bills into one. H.R. 2112 combines the appropriations bills for Agriculture, Commerce-Justice-Science and the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development bills (THUD) into a single bill that is headed to a House-Senate conference committee that could convene as early as this Thursday.

The minibus approach is somewhat unusual in that Congress either passes individual appropriations on their own or it wraps all 12 into a single "omnibus” bill as it did for FY 2011. The THUD portion of the bill is identical to the $55.3 billion version that passed the Senate Appropriations Committee in September. That bill slashes funding for the Community Development Block Grant program from the FY 2011 level of $3.3 billion (a 16.3% cut over FY 2010) to $2.85 billion and the HOME program from the FY 2011 of $1.6 billion to $1.0 billion. It also contains a number of "reforms” to the HOME program designed to ensure better underwriting of project and expediting their successful completion. The FY 2010 level of HOME formula grants was $1.825 billion, 12% higher than the FY 2011 final amount. The House THUD Subcommittee bill contains an increase of $200 million in CDBG formula grants to $3.5 billion, but it includes a pro vision that reduces the planning and administrative cap from the current 20% to 10%. In an extensive series of meetings NACCED and others have been pressing members of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to agree on the higher House number for CDBG and HOME and drop the provision cutting the CDBG cap. See attached materials.

Senate staff has said that the reason CDBG was cut in its bill was to accommodate other "priorities” such as the Obama Administration’s Sustainable Communities and Choice Neighborhoods initiatives, funding for high speed rail and transportation "Tiger Grants.” Based on the intensive lobbying by NACCED and others, it is anticipated that the amounts in the Senate bill will increase in the final conference committee agreement.

It is possible that the conference committee on the minibus could complete its work and a final bill passed before the November 18 th expiration of the current continuing resolution (CR). This would be a far cry from April when the FY 2011 CR was finally passed.

Super Committee Searching for Package of Deficit Reduction Measures

The 12 member, bipartisan congressional "Super Committee” has three weeks left to fashion and approve a plan to cut the federal deficit by at least $1.2 trillion over the next 10-years. The committee grew out of an agreement this summer to raise the federal debt ceiling. Under that agreement the supper committee is to report legislation by November 23 rd that details how to cut spending and possibly raise revenues to achieve at least $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction. If the super committee succeeds in finding that amount it will be put to an up or down vote (no amendments) by the House and Senate on or before December 23 rd. Should the super committee fall short of the $1.2 trillion mark across-the-board cuts, taken equally from defense and domestic programs, would be triggered, a process known as sequestration. NACCED and other stakeholders have written to the Super Committee in support of protecting the CDBG and HOME programs. See attached letter.

Meanwhile, a bi-partisan group of 100 members of the House (60 democrats and 40 republicans) urged the super committee to "go big” and find $4 trillion in deficit reduction. They urged that everything be put on the table including cuts to entitlement programs (Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security) as well as revenues from changes in tax laws. The letter did not contain any specifics but signers included some of the most conservative members of the House.

House republican leaders have balked against any agreement that raises taxes which the democratic leadership has insisted that it will not support changes to entitlement programs with a corresponding increase in revenues.

The outcome of the super committee’s deliberations has definite implications for affordable housing and community development programs on both the spending and the tax incentives side. The super community is likely to direct the tax-writing committees to draft legislation to reform the income tax code, possibly broadening the tax base in order to reduce tax rates. Such a scenario puts at risk "tax preferences” such as the tax-exemption on bonds and the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. A concerted effort is under way to educate members of both the super committee as well as other members of Congress on the benefits of these tax incentives.

The following information comes from Steve Johnson, Director of the Entitlement Communities Division, Office of Block Grant Assistance at HUD headquarters.

Joint PIH/CPD Notice Issued on Social Services

A joint notice has been issued by HUD’s Offices of Public and Indian Housing (PIH) and Community Planning and Development (CPD) encouraging public housing agencies (PHAs) and state and local grant recipients to forge partnerships with public and private agencies to promote HUD-assisted resident connections to health care, education, employment, and other social services. Notice PIH-2011-51/CPD 2011-09 cites Goal 3 of HUD’s Strategic Plan 2010-2015, which views housing as a platform for improving the quality of life for HUD-assisted residents. According to the Notice, evidence shows stable housing can be a highly effective base from which a household can connect to needed services. The notice may be accessed through the link below.

The Notice also includes a collection of brief descriptions of various non-housing federal programs that might be useful in working with HUD-assisted residents. For instance, it mentions the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Atlas, which provides county-level information regarding topics such as access to grocery stores, food insecurity, food assistance, and prices. Another example is the U.S. Department of Labor’s One-Stop Career System locator and Workforce Investment Board locator. The Notice also has a variety of sample Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) and Interagency Agreements (IAAs) outlining the nature of collaboration when partnerships are created. These may be helpful to grantees in accessing these resources. Notice PIH-2011-51/CPD 2011-09, is at http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/public_indian_housing/publications/notices

IDIS Online Training Announced for CDBG Grantees

The Office of Block Grant Assistance is offering 6 two-day IDIS Online training sessions in Chicago, IL (November 15-16 and 17-18); Buffalo, NY (November 29-30 and December 1-2); and Los Angeles (Garden Grove, CA, January 10-11 and 12-13). These sessions will provide instructions for navigating through the system and will include policy and programmatic guidance for reporting in IDIS Online. They will cover all subjects needed for grantees to successfully process their CDBG activities and comply with CDBG reporting requirements. Topics will include activity funding, drawdowns, activity set-up, accomplishment reporting, the MicroStrategy IDIS Online reports function, and system features. The training agenda is available at http:/ /www.comcon.org/programs/idis.html under IDIS Training Binder Handouts at the bottom of the page.

Due to limited resources, these sessions will be able to accommodate only one representative per grantee. Additional grantee staff who are interested in receiving the training will be placed on a waiting list and will be notified if space becomes available 3 weeks before the training. Registration will be by phone only to Community Connections at 1-800-998-9999, option 4. Field Offices should contact Karen Pearce at (202) 402-4684 if you or your grantees have any questions. Note: For anyone who attempted to register by phone this past week: Service has been restored this phone number! We apologize for any problems encountered earlier this week.

New IDIS Data Requirements for CDBG Housing Rehabilitation Activities

In order to comply with lead-based paint reporting requirements, the CDBG program will begin collecting data in IDIS on lead-based paint compliance and remedial actions taken for its housing rehabilitation activities. Effective November 1, 2011, grantees will be required to report lead-based paint information for each housing unit rehabilitated with CDBG funds, except for those units where the rehabilitation is limited to installing security devices or smoke detectors, those units that are assisted as part of a tool lending library program, or those units assisted through a program providing supplies and equipment for painting houses. Most of the new data elements will contain tips to assist grantees in entering accurate data. Watch for more information in the next CDBG Program Update.

Webinars Archived For Your Viewing Pleasure

Over 1700 viewers participated in this summer’s four webinars on forthcoming Consolidated Plan Enhancements; over 2,300 viewers attended a series of four " IDIS in 90 Minutes” webinars during August, which provided information about upgrades to CPD’s Integrated Disbursement and Information System. HUD also presented a webinar on Section 3 requirements on July 21. Just this past week, HUD’s Office of Environment and Energy (OEE) presented two Webinars to make Environmental Reviews easier to create. These Webinars provided information about how to use OEE’s suite of Web-based tools to guide regulatory compliance and aid project planning. And also this past week, HUD presented a webinar on the General Section and Policy Requirements for HUD’s FY2012 NOFAs. In case you were not able to view these webinars live, they are archived on HUD’s website for viewing at your conveni ence.

The four 508-compliant, closed-caption Consolidated Plan webinar records and the accompanying PowerPoint presentations are available on the Community Connections Web site at http://www.comcon.org/programs/consolidatedplanenhance.html.

The IDIS in 90 Minutes webinar Recordings and PowerPoint presentations are available on the Community Connections Web site at http://www.comcon.org/programs/idis.html.

For a link to the Section 3 webinar, visit the CDBG program page on HUD’s website and look for the "What’s New” box on the right: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/comm_planning/communitydevelopment/programs

The HUD NOFA webinar can be accessed at: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/press/multimedia/videos

The Environmental Review webinars will be similarly posted on HUD’s website in the next week or so.

The SF-425 replacement for the SF-272 Form

Grantees are required to complete the new form SF-425 Federal Financial Report on a quarterly basis. The new SF-425 report combines the functions filled by the SF-272 Quarterly Cash Transactions report, and the SF 269 report (whose use was discontinued for CDBG some years ago); as a result it is partially duplicative of information available in IDIS. Since the SF-425 contains several pieces of information that are not reported in IDIS, its submission is required, but the intent is to only require grantees to fill out the lines that is not reported in IDIS. The Office of Block Grant Assistance is developing instructions on how to fill out the SF-425 Financial Report for the CDBG program; these instructions will identify which portions of the new form must be filled out, and how.

Update on Reporting problems in FSRS

The Federal Financial Assistance Transparency Act (FFATA) requires Prime awardees to report most subawards in FSRS, in a format linked to the prime federal award. Prime Award data in FSRS is populated from USASpending for Grants, and from FPDS for contracts. USASpending gets its grants data directly from the Federal Agencies. HUD CFO systems transmit the required data to USASpending in a data format called FAADS+. HUD continues to have problems in successfully transmitting data about all of our prime awards. Until the awards are sent from HUD to USASpending and thence to FSRS, prime recipients (HUD grantees and vendors) will be unable to report on their subawards. HUD recommends asking recipients to login no more than once a month to search for their prime award. They can search by award number or by the DUNS number they have registered in CCR. If the prime award is not there, they will have done th eir duty. If it is there, they can report subawards. FSRS does not make extracts of prime award data available to agencies, so there is no effective way for programs to monitor (1) whether their prime awards are listed, or (2) if prime recipients are fulfilling their obligation to report subawards.

Recovery Act Programs

CDBG-R Program Status Update: Over 80% Expended!

The latest PR-87 expenditure report is attached. As of October 17, 2011, 81.22% of CDBG-R funds have been drawn down nationally. The median drawdown rate is 99.21%. Grantees now have less than 12 months left to complete their activities and draw down their remaining funds; the CDBG-R Notice states that any funds not expended as of September 30, 2012 will be returned to the U.S. Treasury.

On a regional basis, the average drawdown rate is now over 75% among grantees in all HUD regions; region X is at 90%.

536 grantees (out of 1167) are 100% drawn down; 250 more grantees are 90%-99.9% drawn. Together, these categories comprise over two thirds of all grantees and nearly $470 million worth of grant funds.

The State of South Carolina remains the largest 100% drawn grant.

Five additional State CDBG grants have now crossed 90% drawdown threshold: MN, OH, WA, WV and WY.

Only 79 of 1167 grantees are less than 50% drawn; these grants comprise $99 million worth of grants and account for $66 million of the $184 million not yet drawn for the whole program. There are 25 million-dollar-plus grants that alone are responsible for $52 million worth of undrawn funds.

11 grantees (with a cumulative $8.2 million of funding) have drawn down less than 10% of their funds. New Orleans is the only million-dollar-plus grant still under 10% drawn.

Only three grantees are still at $0 drawn: Pueblo, CO; Henderson, KY; Paterson, NJ. Three other grantees have drawn less than 1% of their funds: Adams County, CO; Hopkinsville, KY; and Macomb County, MI.

All but $21.8 million of funds have been funded to specific activities in IDIS. Three grantees have still funded less than 25% of their funds to specific activities in IDIS: Downey, CA; Macomb County, MI; New Orleans, LA.

Expenditure Rates By Type of Grantee (as of 10/14/11)

CDBG-R and NSP2 Achieve High Reporting Rates in FederalReporting.gov

The latest quarterly reporting period for Recovery Act programs (covering the period July 1 – September 30) ended on October 14. The CDBG-R and NSP2 programs achieved a high rate of successful reporting by grantees. Only 4 CDBG-R grantees and only 1 NSP2 grantee failed to submit their reports in the FederalReporting.gov system by the deadline. As in past quarters, it took intensive outreach by CPD staff to grantees during the last week to achieve these results. Over the past year, two problems dominate the explanations given by grantees when we have contacted them to remind them of the imminent deadline:

Staff were unaware that their grantee Central Contractor Registry (CCR) number expired, or waited until too close to the reporting deadline to get their CCR number renewed. (Grantees must have a current CCR number in order to submit a report.)

The grantee staff person previously responsible for Recovery Act reporting left or changed jobs; and either no other staff were aware of this requirement, or no one else was assigned this responsibility after that person’s departure.

Don’t let either of these situations happen to you! The Office of Block Grant Assistance sends out Reporting Update announcements by email prior to each quarterly reporting period, and sends email reminders to grantees whose CCR number will expire before the next reporting period ends; however, we experience a fairly high rate of undeliverable message bounce backs because of grantee staff turnover. Grantees are reminded that it is their responsibility to keep their data and contact information current. On a positive note, HUD notes that nearly 500 CDBG-R grantees have completed their activities and have submitted a final report in FederalReporting.gov.

Downloads

Download Thank You Letter to Chairman Latham

Download Memo to THUD Staff on Cut in Admin

Last Updated ( Thursday, 03 November 2011 )