HAF is onthe Way! (Homeowners Assistance Program)

[Music] well good morning and I'm pleased to have a special guest with me this morning he's from the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department Mr Ryan vanderbank and he is with the home ownership Division and he's got some very exciting uh news the clock is running on this but it's really good information if you are in a pinch Ryan good morning and thank you for being here good morning thank you for having me well I'm excited I think you are best qualified to just kind of explain this because this is your baby and it involves some uh some good things for people in uh manufactured homes who may be looking at eviction for uh rent or rent eviction notices so take it away Ryan uh yes so I am the manager of the homeowner assistance fund program or half as I'm going to call it today and we are hoping to help more folks out as we wind the program down especially those that are most at risk of say manufactured home or floating home eviction or foreclosure um a little background about the half program it is a federal pandemic emergency response program enacted by the American rest rescue plan act it's administered at the federal level by the US Treasury all 50 state governments many US territories and many tribes operate their own half program with the funds uh the overall goal is to prevent foreclosures and maintain home ownership uh for homeowners who were financially impacted by the covid-19 pandemic that means a loss of income uh or an increase in housing expenses that is directly related to the p pmic in Oregon we can uh help homeowners get caught up on housing costs like mortgages property taxes HOAs lot rent or mortgage fees uh and for some lowincome families we will also make a few ongoing payments to help boost housing stability for them that's outstanding now I understand the clock is ticking on this uh due to the program winding down but you're still taking applications am I correct yes we are we uh were allocated about $90 million in the beginning we have a little under $8 million left so our average award is about $26,500 and so we estimate we can take about 300 new applications and so while I say the average is 26,500 we can actually help homeowners by providing up to $50,000 to help them reinstate their housing accounts and 10,000 Ong we can put a lot of money at this that's great and to be specific this is only for homeowners getting close to foreclosure or lot rent eviction and it has to come through a housing counselor how does that work yes so uh for homeowners who are in foreclosure whether it's judicial non-judicial or County tax foreclosure or homeowners who are facing a uh a park or Marina eviction proceeding or having a 10day notice um they will visit one of our local intake partners and you can find our intake partner list uh linked to our website at Oregon homeowner assistance.org um they have their own intake process so please don't delay if you're in one of these situations call up one of our intake Partners in your area or the closest one meet with them they have the ability to provide free foreclosure avoidance counseling evaluate you for our eligibility criteria and if you fit the eligibility criteria they can help you prepare and submit the half application and walk you through the process as it goes through underwriting this sounds really good uh and this is Statewide anybody uh within Oregon uh can qualif ify for this yes what is the timeline how long do we have to until this thing closes down and what happens to the money at the end we are planning to make our final payments in February of next year so we will most likely stop taking new applications sometime in October this year based on the timeline of um reviewing the applications underwriting the information on our end meeting our federal and state requ requirements communicating with servicers Parks marinas counties and coordinating everything in the information uh coordinating signing half loan documents uh which secures our assistance to the property and then we fund the application so it does take some time to go through our process which is why we're tentatively looking at October for um final applications and unfortunately if there is money left over at the end it goes back to the federal government so we don't want to waste it we'd like to see as many people as possible get helped out I know it takes time for this to happen does applying stop the clock does it stop the eviction or the uh the processes will this keep the person from being evicted while their application being processed that is uh entirely dependent on the person that is running the process uh half is a voluntary program so the serer the park owner the marina owner has to agree to participate in our program and when they do they also have to um work with us and in many cases we are successful in postponing or pausing the process that is going on we can postpone foreclosure dates if we are able to work with the uh foreclosing party if somebody's in eviction we can also ask their attorney to pause the eviction process while we evaluate and fund an application uh some are willing to work with us some are not it's it's entirely dependent on who is running the process would seem better to get paid than have an empty home but uh you can never understand totally what's going on in a person's mind I guess that's how I feel too okay we do our best to um pause or postpone things while we're evaluating an application well I'm going to include the links and the link is to oregonhomeowners assistance.org if they need to reach out and get more information on this program that'd be great are phone calls appropriate or does that just delay the process uh yes we can take phone calls but at this point we will refer people to the intake Partners so you can also call us and locate your most your closest intake partner too all right this sounds very good so the clock is running if you are a person in a manufactured home facing eviction or foreclosure for lot rer property taxes here is an opportunity to get some help the email address and the uh web address is going to be in the uh podcast connect and uh this is a great program Ryan is there anything else we should uh be talking about before I let you go I know you're a busy person uh I have three things that might be relevant to your listeners um great I mentioned that our assistance is secured to the property in the form of a loan and that loan is a no interest no payment loan that is Forgiven after 5 years if they still maintain and own the home as their primary resident uh if they sell they have to repay all or a portion uh based on a forgiveness schedule and the way this works for manufactured housing is if you own the land we will prepare a mortgage and that mortgage is recorded in the County Title records uh if you own the structure but you're in a park and you don't own the land or you're a floating home in a marina we take a security interest in the structure with the appropriate state agency um these loans are non recourse which means our interest is in the property and so in most cases if somebody is later foreclosed um like they're still in a bad situation or if they have to walk away we're not going to enforce the loan against somebody individually and I think that's an important point that really is yes um another thing that we have done that's pretty Innovative that I think is uh we ran into a problem with a lot of manufactured homeowners in a park uh where they did not transfer or register their ownership with the Department of uh consumer and business services manufactured home database of ownership that's requirement for our program and so we ran into this government Catch 22 because to register you have to be current your County taxes and most people applying for our program are not um so we've developed a workaround process so that we can help people uh who would otherwise be eligible for our program um we will work with their application approve their application conditionally we will pay the county personal property taxes the person then registers their ownership with thecbs and the registration that we need and when they are the owner we will take our security interest and then we will pay any lot rent or mortgage that is due so we'll still be able to work with people uh and this usually involves close collaboration with those housing counselors I talked about or an attorney that is innovative as the Dickens that is very good uh those catch 22s can really hamstring a process uh so good work there anything else that uh comes to mind uh yes one last thing I mentioned the housing counselors that we're working with the half program is also sponsoring free or lowcost legal representation for homeowners who are facing foreclosure lot rent eviction or that may have title issues uh or just questions about what their rights are and so listeners can learn more about this opportunity which we call the Oregon homeowner legal assistance project uh by reviewing the resources web page the last tab on our website at Oregon homeowner assistance.org it's a really great opportunity that we'll be around as long as half is operating so not that much longer but for anybody that needs that legal assistance There's an opportunity for it uh free or low cost that's exceptional because it's always good to consult with an attorney when you're getting to the point of going to court you don't want to try and do this yourself at least that's my opinion yes all right Ryan I think we've covered it all uh thank you very much for being here today taking time out of your busy schedule and thank you and the folks at Oregon Housing and Community Services Department it sounds like you're doing some great work there and thank you very much yeah thank you for having me we're doing our best to help as many people as we can outstanding have a good day thank [Music] you this program was produced by retired guy Productions