Monday Blog.

Unspent HOME Funds Returned to HUD:

Steve Gold, The Disability Odyssey continues

In the past seven years, nearly $17 million dollars from the HOME Investment Partnership program was returned to HUD for failure of a participating jurisdiction to meet the statutory two-year commitment requirement. That is, each year HUD allocates HOME funds. Recipients, state and local participating jurisdictions, must commit how these funds will be actually spent within two years. If this requirement is not satisfied, the uncommitted HOME funds must be returned to HUD as and they are lost by the participating jurisdiction.

As was explained in recent Information Bulletins, HOME funds can be used as Tenant Based Rental Assistance grants for low income persons. These are like housing vouchers. Given the desperate need for housing vouchers, it is quite amazing and depressing that the following jurisdictions, rather than allocate the funds as Tenant Based Rental Assistance, returned these HOME funds because the jurisdiction did not commit them to TBRA grants.

Click here to read the jurisdictions and the amount of HOME funds lost.

Click here for back issues of other Information Bulletins.


Resources for People with Disabilities Update: ABILITY House Program

In partnership with Habitat for Humanity affiliates, each ABILITY House is an accessible home built for a family where one or more members have health conditions or disabilities. The project also reaches out to volunteers, including veterans and students with disabilities, to help in building the homes.

This information has recently been updated, and is now available - Click here.

NEW REPORT DOCUMENTS THE SEVERE HOUSING CRISIS FOR PEOPLE WITH INTELLECTUAL AND OTHER LONG-TERM DISABILITIES IN AMERICA

Priced Out in 2006 documents the continued lack of affordable and accessible housing for people with long-term disabilities, including intellectual disabilities, physical disabilities, chronic illness, and mental illness. The national average for a one-bedroom apartment is at $715 and a studio/efficiency is at $633, and both are higher than the entire monthly income of people with disabilities who rely on the Supplemental Social Security Income (SSI) program.

The report is published by the Technical Assistance Collaborative and the Consortium of Citizens with Disabilities, and is available to read and download. Click here.