NSP Open Forum Q&A Webinar Jane Bilger, Hunter Kurtz ... · CSH, one of the NSP technical...

NSP Open Forum Q&A Webinar – April 4, 2013 of 23 Jane Bilger, Hunter Kurtz, David Noguera, Ryan Flannery, Jennifer Hylton, Participants

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Jane Bilger: Good afternoon, everyone. And good morning to our participants

on the West Coast. Welcome to today’s open forum NSP webinar.

And thank you for joining us. Today’s webinar, sponsored by

HUD, is an opportunity for NSP grantees and partners to ask

questions of the HUD staff on a broad range of NSP topics;

whether it’s regulations, project structure or reporting, you have

direct access to key NSP staff.

The format for this webinar includes a brief opening from HUD

staff on the current NSP topics, and then we will open up for your

questions.

On our panel from HUD today, we have David Noguera, Hunter

Kurtz, Jennifer Hylton, and Ryan Flannery. I am Jane Bilger from

CSH, one of the NSP technical assistance providers and moderator

for this webinar. Assisting with the webinar is Amber Buening,

also from CSH, and Christian Aurand from WebEx.

Hopefully you’ve been able to sign onto this WebEx system on

your computer and then used your attendee ID number to call into

the conference line. That enables us to be able to identify you

during the question and answer portion. If you just dialed into the

telephone conference, you will be in listening mode only and will

not be able to ask a live question.

When we open up for questions, you can ask a question either in

writing or over the telephone. If you want to ask a question on the

phone, please select the hand icon located in the upper-right hand

side of your screen under the participant box, and the hand icon

will appear next to your name. We will unmute your telephone

when it’s your turn to ask a question. Once you’ve asked your

question, please remember to press the icon again so that you

remove yourself from the question queue. If you want to ask a

question in writing, go ahead and type your question in the box

titled Q&A on the right-hand side of your screen.

Just a quick heads up, at the end of this webinar we ask

participants to provide us with feedback through a survey that we

will post on the closing slide.

Let me go ahead and turn the webinar over to the HUD staff. I

think, Hunter, you’re going to take the lead.

Hunter Kurtz: Yes. Hi, everyone. This is Hunter Kurtz with HUD NSP here in

lovely Washington D.C., where it’s cold and hazy. I don’t know if

we’ve ever had a cold and hazy day before, but we have one today.



We have Jennifer Hylton and David Noguera, as well as Ryan

Flannery, who I believe is going to call in here in a few minutes.

We also have our two new staff members to the NSP team, Stan

Gorton and Ron Borgman. So welcome, gentlemen.

We’re just going to cover a few hot topics that are coming up, talk

about some different things. I’m going to turn the call over to

David now. David.

David Noguera: Good afternoon, everyone. And thanks for joining us again today.

I wanted to let everyone know that we are planning to do another

round of problem solving clinics. For those of you who have

participated in the past, you’ll know that these clinics are

opportunities for grantees, sub-recipients, any affiliates that may

work with our grantees, to come together and meet in informal

settings with technical assistance providers as well as HUD staff

and go through various projects, troubleshooting any problems that

may have arised as the grantees are implementing these projects.

So we’re looking at doing another round of clinics probably

starting the first week or the second week of May. The dates

haven’t all been worked out, so I won’t announce those now. But I

do want you to look out for the listserv announcements and the

notices on the NSP resource exchange. There will be a listing of

the various locations that will be going. These will be smaller than

the clinics that we’ve done in the past. They will be held at the

HUD field offices, and we expect them to be able to accommodate

roughly 40 to 50 participants. We won’t be doing the seminar-

style workshops. We’ll be limiting our offerings to the table topic

discussions. But we will have technical assistance providers on

hand to go through any compliance or project implementation

issues that you guys may be experiencing. So I just wanted to

share that with you.

The other thing I wanted to mention is that we’ve been very active

as these expenditure deadlines have come in. We’ve been very

active monitoring the deadlines and holding our informal

consultations with grantees. There were – I don’t have the exact

numbers, but there were a handful of NSP1 grantees that missed

the deadline, but a fairly large number of NSP3 grantees that

missed the 50 percent expenditure mark. So we’re actively going

through that process now, trying to get a handle on what the cause

of the miss was and working out what the appropriate sanction will

be.



So if you find that you’re unable to reach someone, or maybe

we’re taking a little bit more time to get back to you, just know we

haven’t forgotten about you, but we’ve just been busy with these

consultations and the follow-up surrounding the consultations.

So those are the only two hot things I wanted to share with you.

And with that I will open it up to you guys to offer us questions.

Let us know what’s on your minds.

Jane Bilger: Just as a reminder for those folks, if you have questions, you can

ask them over the phone by clicking on the hand icon under the

participant box at the upper-right hand corner, and we will unmute

your telephone line so you can ask your question. You will need to

be linked with the webinar through your attendee ID for us to

identify you. If you want to write in a question, you can type it in

the question and answer box at the right-hand side of your screen.

Do we have any questions? Amber? I don’t see any hands raised

as of yet. We do have one written question, so why don’t I start

there while everybody else gets their questions in order.

This one is coming from Pam Raines, and it says, “We have a

parks facility improvement project that will be ongoing using other

funding sources. When can the activity be marked completed in

the QPR as all NSP1 funds have been expended?”

David Noguera: Thank you for your question. I believe you said it was a park or a

facility that may be associated with a park.

Jane Bilger: It says a parks facility, yes. So a public facility.

David Noguera: So whether the park is being funded partially with NSP funds or

wholly with NSP funds, it really wouldn’t be considered complete

until it is – if it was housing we would say until you have a

beneficiary in there. If it’s a park, we’d say until it’s open and

ready for business. Now I do know that there are a couple of

different places within DRGR where you indicate that a project is

complete. Ryan, if you’re on, you might be able to help

differentiate between the different components in DRGR.

Ryan Flannery: I am on. Well, the main place that you would designate an activity

as being complete would be in the Action Plan. So you would

change the activity status to complete. And I think that’s – as far

as when it’s complete, again, I think you just explained that. But

from just a process standpoint in DRGR, it’s just in the Action

Plan, changing that dropdown menu to complete.



Jane Bilger: Okay, Pam, hopefully that answers the question. If you have a

follow-up question, certainly write it in or you can press the hand

icon and ask the question directly to the HUD staff if you have

follow-up.

I do see we have another written question. And this comes from a

city. “Can non-adjacent property owners acquire an NSP land

bank property designated for disposition?”

David Noguera: So it sounds like you’re saying the property that had been land

banked isn’t what is up for question, but it’s an adjacent property

next to one that’s being land banked?

Hunter Kurtz: I think they’re non-adjacent.

Jane Bilger: A non-adjacent property owner. So someone who is not adjacent –

or a property owner not adjacent to the NSP land bank property

would like to acquire it –

David Noguera: Oh, I see. And perhaps this property was funded with NSP funds

and –

Hunter Kurtz: It’s a land bank NSP property. So I think the question really –

David Noguera: It’s about side lots.

Hunter Kurtz: What is the purpose or what is the use that they’re planning on

doing with the property?

Jennifer Hylton: If it’s not an adjacent property owner, it’s not a side lot. That’s

how we define side lots. So I don’t think you could use that

disposition strategy.

Hunter Kurtz: Right. But if they are income eligible, then they would still be in

position to purchase it.

Jennifer Hylton: Well, only if they were – I mean, I don’t see how you could sell to

an individual –

Hunter Kurtz: Because you’d have to live next door to the lot.

Jennifer Hylton: Yeah. There’s really [Crosstalk].

David Noguera: No, no, no. It would just be a straight acquisition.



Jennifer Hylton: It wouldn’t meet a national objective, though. They’d have to still

meet a national objective. So really the key is [Crosstalk].

Hunter Kurtz: I think we need to get some more details from the person asking

this question so that we can sort of figure out what they mean by

this. So if they could write in and sort of explain what these folks

want to do with this property, or if they want to call in, we’d be

happy to talk to them and figure out what they’d like.

Jane Bilger: I do see that they just raised their hand, so why don’t we open up

for City of Lorain to ask further information on this question.

Participant: Thank you. My name is Dave, with the City of Lorain. I’m the

guy who typed that in. And sorry if it was confusing. The

question is, yes, it’s a land bank property that we want to dispose

of. And I think the lady might have already answered it. Only the

adjacent owners are able to get that as a side lot. Some third party

that doesn’t border the property, they can’t come in and acquire it,

can they?

Jennifer Hylton: It depends what they were going to do with it. Right? I mean, if

they were going to do something with the property that would meet

a national objective – like we talked about how you can do

community gardens now, or things like that.

Hunter Kurtz: As long as you don’t use NSP funds to [Crosstalk].

Jennifer Hylton: Right. So there are things they could do, but they would have to

meet a national objective. And if they don’t, then you would have

to sell it for fair market value assuming you met a national

objective with –

Participant: With the demolition.

Jennifer Hylton: Yeah, with the land banking and demo.

Participant: Thank you.

Amber Buening: And it looks like we have a question from Joseph Gray with the

Prichard Housing Authority. And you’re unmuted now, if you

want to go ahead with your question.

Participant: Yes, my question is in regards to unused program income that’s

still in our account. If we need to draw those funds down and we

need to use them in an area that is not currently budgeted for, say



that budget line item that’s been exhausted, can we draw it down in

any budget line item and then just report it in the appropriate line

items as an expenditure?

Jennifer Hylton: That’s a Ryan question.

Ryan Flannery: No, because you’d have to – I mean, it sounds to me like you have

– if you have PI that you’ve receipted that you potentially haven’t

assigned to a certain budget – I guess the question I have is why

wouldn’t you increase the budget of the activity that you would

like to draw against. Why wouldn’t you just increase that budget

and then draw down the available PI?

Participant: We just weren’t sure if we needed to do a budget modification.

Ryan Flannery: Well, I mean, in DRGR you would. And in your Action Plan you

would. And again, if we’re talking about going through the public

review and all that, then that’s something that you’d work with

your field office on. And it really depends on how much. But

from a DRGR standpoint what you would do would be, you know,

you’d have estimated PI in your Action Plan, you know, the first

page of your Action Plan. So you would account for that

additional PI to give room to receipt it. Then you receipt it, and

then you would adjust your projects based on where you’re going

to be drawing from. So you would receipt it against whatever

activity generated it. But if you have another activity that you

need to use it for or that you planned to use it for, then you would

adjust that budget to increase both the project that it falls under’s

budget, and the activity itself. And this is all done in the Action

Plan. But yes, you would increase your activity budget in order to

allow for the use of program income for that particular activity.

Participant: And going forward would we still need to recede all program

income for the remainder of this fiscal year in DRGR?

Ryan Flannery: Yes, yes. I mean, is there [Crosstalk].

David Noguera: That’s a continuous process. As you continue to generate program

income, you’re going to need to record it.

Ryan Flannery: Right. Even after the deadlines and everything, you continue to

pretty much operate as usual. So yeah, you’ll be receipting your

program income and you’ll be spending it, unless there’s some

other circumstance that’s put onto your particular grant.



David Noguera: Now, once we close out these grants, the timing on how long you

have to continue to report will change. But you’re not there yet.

So just continue with business as usual for the time being.

Jane Bilger: Okay, thank you, Joseph. I’m not seeing – there is one question

from Deborah McCrae, and I think it was – it just says “locations”.

And I believe she was responding or asking a question following

up, David, on your discussion about the clinics. And you indicated

that –

David Noguera: Okay. Yes, I can read them off here. So we’re looking at doing

two in the State of Florida. One will be at the HUD Miami field

office, and one at the Jacksonville field office. We’ll do one in

Atlanta. We’ll do one either in New York City or in the Newark

field office. We’re just looking on the availability of space. One

in Columbus, one in Detroit, Denver, Los Angeles, California, San

Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Fort Worth, Texas.

Jane Bilger: And the timing on those again is –

David Noguera: So we expect them to start the second week of May, and they’ll

probably run through the end of August, perhaps early September

depending on – it just depends on our ability to schedule rooms.

But we will give everyone as much notice as possible about these

upcoming dates.

We should have the Florida dates locked down probably tomorrow

or Monday at the latest. And we’ll begin sending out

announcements with registration information and location

information probably Monday.

Jane Bilger: Great. And Deborah did respond that that, in fact, was what her

question was. So thank you for that additional information.

Folks, we have a lot of folks on the line and not too many

questions. So please, I encourage you if there are issues that

you’re facing in your community, you have access to the folks at

NSP HUD national office right now. So go ahead and see if they

can help you think through an issue that you’re dealing with.

David Noguera: I will say if you don’t have a question but perhaps you have a

comment, one of the things that we’ve been looking for are

examples of economic development projects that may be using

NSP. If you have any of those that you might want to share with

us, that would be helpful.



Hunter Kurtz: Also, we’re always looking for new suggestions on webinar topics.

So please let us know if you have any of those, or even something

maybe you’d like to hear discussed at the clinics, let us know.

Amber Buening: And as a reminder, if you’ve raised your hand and your question

has been answered, could you click the hand icon again so that you

are no longer in the question queue. Thanks.

Hunter Kurtz: Do we have any new questions?

Jane Bilger: I’m not seeing any.

Amber Buening: It looks like we just got a hand raised from Art Christian. You’re

unmuted now, if you want to go ahead with your comment or

question.

Participant: Yes. We have NSP3 and HOME grants that we manage. And we

have actually met the – and we’re talking about NSP3 and NSP1.

For NSP3 we’ve met the 50 percent expenditure deadline, but

we’re involved in a multi-family rental gut rehab project that the

development costs have come in over budget. And we’re looking

to utilize HOME funds in that project also. I just wanted to ask

what are some things that we need to look out for in terms of

combining the two? Any restrictions on what the HOME funds

can be used on?

David Noguera: Right. Well, I guess the first thing I would point out is that the two

programs have different income beneficiary limits. So with

HOME funds, you can use – the units can serve those families that

earn up to 80 percent AMI. And NSP it’s 120 percent AMI. So if

you’re combining the two funds, the more restrictive rules will

apply.

Hunter Kurtz: Or you could do it proportionally.

David Noguera: Or if you don’t want to take that approach, you can keep

everything separate, show the amount of funds that are being used

from NSP relative to the amount of funds that are being used from

HOME and carry out a proportional breakdown in terms of the

number of units that serve each.

Another thing that is often tricky that comes up is in determining

the affordability period. In some cases when you combine funds

perhaps your HOME program is using a resale approach and your

NSP is using a recapture approach. You will have to decide which

one of the two you’re going to use, because you certainly cannot



use both. So please beware of that. Pick one and use it for the

duration of the period.

Other than that, you’ll have the same Davis-Bacon, environmental

review requirements, all of the other cross-cutting requirements.

So I can’t think of anything else that would be different.

And in reporting in DRGR you’ll want to let it be known that there

are two different sources of funds being used on the project.

How big is the project? How many units?

Participant: It’s just a two-building, 24-unit project.

David Noguera: Okay, good. [Crosstalk]

Ryan Flannery: I was going to say in DRGR you could select other funds in the

Action Plan. So when you’re editing your activities, and then you

could select – I’m pretty sure you can select other federal sources,

or something along those lines. And then the amount.

Participant: And we have a HOME staff that’s – we’re all in the same division,

but separated. Will we have to be looking at high and low HOME

rents also for this?

David Noguera: Yes, that would apply if you’re introducing the HOME funds.

Participant: Okay. All right, well, thank you very much.

David Noguera: Okay. Good luck with it.

Participant: Thanks.

Jane Bilger: I see we have a question from Angelia Briggs. She has written in,

“We have met our 25 percent set aside for the original grant

amount, but as our housing market rebounds we have noticed the

houses are being priced outside the very low income purchasing

price points. We have tried several things, including down

payment assistance. Are there any other suggestions you have to

make these affordable?”

Hunter Kurtz: Well, if you own the homes, there is always the opportunity to do

some sort of scattered-site rental with them. And we know a lot of

grantees have changed their programs from home ownership to

scattered-site rental to deal with the 25 percent set aside. So that’s

always a strategy to consider.



David Noguera: Right. Because many of these very low income households really

cannot afford to maintain a home. The various challenges that

come with home ownership can be costly, so rental is often a

preferred option to serve that income group.

The other things that’s always on the table is increasing the level of

subsidy that’s being provided on the units. So yes, you may be

doing down payment assistance. Perhaps you may need to offer

secondary mortgages or larger down payments depending on the

household’s income to make it more affordable. But there really is

no silver bullet on that.

What I will suggest is that if you are still feeling a little unsure

about your prospects and maybe you’d like to discuss it with one

of our technical assistance providers, just submit a request and we

can always get someone on the phone with you to walk you

through the challenges you’re experiencing.

Jane Bilger: We can certainly be doing that. And I believe we’ve been talking

about some additional webinars on that topic.

Hunter Kurtz: Yes.

Jane Bilger: The next written question we have is from Anthony Grisby. “In

what circumstances can NSP1 funds be used for economic

development projects?”

David Noguera: Good question. Go for it.

Jennifer Hylton: Special economic development activities are now eligible under

Eligible Use B and Eligible Use E if you want. So you can do it

under either of those eligible uses, which basically takes care of all

the property types; things like foreclosures, abandoned properties,

vacant properties. All of those are eligible now to be developed as

special economic development activities. And that was a change

that was in the closeout notice. So that’s eligible.

And for NSP2 and NSP3, for those of you who are curious, you

can now do it under Eligible Use B for those programs. But in 1

you can in B and E.

David Noguera: We did a webinar not too long ago where we had some charts on

disposition options.



Hunter Kurtz: Any of the past webinars that we just recently did on the closeout –

the Q&A closeout webinars, you can find those.

Jennifer Hylton: And it’s also in the demolition disposition guidance that’s now

available on the website, too.

Jane Bilger: Okay, Anthony, if you have any follow-up questions, certainly

either raise your hand or resubmit a written question on that. And

as you heard earlier, HUD is looking for some examples of what

you’re thinking about for an economic development project.

The next question we have is from Ruth Simmons. “We need

some more guidance on how to technically move program income

from sub-recipients that are ending their program for the purposes

of moving these funds to sub-recipients that still have a high need

in their areas and may be short of funds. Thank you.”

David Noguera: So I guess you could approach it from two perspectives. Ryan can

speak about how you would make the change in DRGR, and we’ll

talk briefly about how you would do it from a programmatic

standpoint.

From a programmatic standpoint, it’s really a matter of what did

you put in your agreement with that sub-recipient in terms of how

the program income dollars were to be used. Did you tell them

that they could keep it and continue carrying out activities, or say

that they need to return those. Either way there may need to be

some amendment made with the sub-recipient agreement so that

they know if they are no longer carrying out NSP eligible

activities, that those funds are to be returned to the grantee. And

once you, the grantee receive those funds, you can then disperse

them to any sub-recipient that you find necessary to do so. You

would obviously work out another agreement with them or amend

the existing agreement that you have to accommodate those

additional funds. But it would be a pretty straightforward process.

Ryan, do you want to touch on [Crosstalk]

Hunter Kurtz: Can I add something to that, David? In any situation like this

when you’re moving funds from one sub-recipient to the other, you

should contact your field office just to ensure that it doesn’t trigger

a substantial amendment. Usually it wouldn’t but it may. And you

don’t want to get yourself hung up later for not having done what

you needed to do now.

David Noguera: Right. It could be that you’re moving it from one geography to

another as a result of going from one sub-recipient to the next. So



it could be that the activities that the first sub-recipient was using

the funds for are now changing relative to what the new sub-

recipient is going to use it for. So any one of those factors could

result in a need to amend your action plan. So definitely touch

base with the Field Office.

Jane Bilger: What’s that noise? Okay.

David Noguera: Ryan, from a DRGR standpoint, if you’re looking to move funds

from one sub-recipient to another.

Ryan Flannery: Right. So hi Ruth, by the way, but we work a lot together. It

really depends, and I don’t remember off the top of my head if

there are program income accounts or not. If there are not then it’s

a lot easier. It’s really just a matter of – the PI is receded where

it’s generated and then you can pretty much just pull it for those

activities. You’d have to increase or move budgets around, which

is kind of a process that we can talk about offline or we can get

you information on.

But if you have program income accounts it’s a little different.

You would have to revise receipts. You’d have to move receipts

around so that you can apply the receipt to correct activity. That’s

under the program that’s continuing, that you’re going to continue

to fund, so that sub-recipients are going to continue to fund. So

that might be a little bit more tricky. Still not too hard. And then

of course the increase in budgets and decrease in budgets would

also apply. So there are a couple of steps there, and I would be

happy to talk to you about them because, again, it’s kind of

technical. But generally speaking, that’s the concept behind it.

Amber Buening: It looks like Anthony Grisby has a response to your earlier answer

to his question.

Participant: I was just wondering, I have a couple of projects that are far too

complicated to do through a series of emails here. I was

wondering if there was an offline contact that I could discuss

economic development projects using NSP with.

David Noguera: Definitely. You can just send me an email. Do you know if our

email addresses are included on the –

Hunter Kurtz: Jane, are our email addresses included on the –

Jane Bilger: Not on the slides, no.



David Noguera: So for me it’s just [email protected].

Hunter Kurtz: The other option is always to just go to our Ask a Question site on

the AAQ website, and you can always submit a question there. We

would be happy to get back to you.

Participant: Okay. Thank you, sir.

David Noguera: Have a good one.

Participant: All right.

Jane Bilger: Do we have any new questions over the phone? Otherwise I can

move on to the other questions. And just following up on Ruth

Simmons, “If you could repeat the guidance on when it is

allowable to move program income from NSP1 to NSP3.”

Hunter Kurtz: Well, you don’t really move program income from NSP1 to NSP3.

They are separate programs. So the program income in NSP1

would still have to follow all of the NSP1 rules, and the program

income from NSP3 would have to apply and follow all the NSP3

rules. Now what maybe she’s referring to is administrative

expenses. You can use NSP3 admin funds to pay for NSP1 admin

activities and vice versa. But the program income itself has to be

separate, and it has to do everything and follow the rules of that

program.

Jennifer Hylton: You could fund, though, assuming like Hunter says, that it matches

the criteria of both programs. You could definitely use program

income, NSP1 program income and NSP3 program income in the

same project, assuming all the rules are met in both projects as to

target areas, you could definitely intermingle those funds - doing

things that are eligible in both programs.

Jane Bilger: Okay. Hopefully that helps to answer your question, Ruth. And

you can write back in if you have additional follow-up. Or

certainly, as Hunter indicated earlier, reach out for some technical

assistance.

Ruth does have a follow-up question. “I heard in a previous

webinar that as long as the sub-recipient was complete, they could

use leftover program income over to NSP3. Is that incorrect?”

Jennifer Hylton: Maybe Ruth should call in. Leftover income from NSP1?



David Noguera: That’s what she’s thinking, yeah. So if you’d like to combine them

on an activity, as long as the target areas are the same, yes. From a

reporting standpoint the NSP1 PI will maintain its characteristics.

But from a project implementation standpoint, certainly you can

use NSP1 PI on an NSP3 project.

Jennifer Hylton: And because it’s a sub-recipient, they have to track that program

income. So I don’t know if maybe there’s maybe more of like a

developer who has money, but it’s not program. If you’re a sub-

recipient and you have NSP1 program income, you have to use that

for an NSP1 eligible activity, which could also be NSP3 activities.

But they’ve got to keep tracking that. It doesn’t just go away.

Ryan Flannery: And essentially you’d have duplicate activities, one in each grant

in DRGR. So from a reporting standpoint.

Jane Bilger: Ruth, if you are able to ask any follow-up over the phone, that

would be helpful. Otherwise you can ask a question and get some

additional follow-up.

Amber Buening: And then we have a hand raised, but he has not called in.

Jane Bilger: Darrell Swinton, if you could call in and identify your call in ID or

type in your question. That’s just a reminder to everybody. When

you signed into your webinar, you were provided with an attendee

ID, and that’s the way we’re able to link you and answer your

questions on the phone.

Hunter Kurtz: Do we have any other questions?

Jane Bilger: I don’t see any.

David Noguera: I’m glad to see that so many of you are chiming in to listen us

today. But we’d certainly like to hear from you. Maybe you have

some projects you’d like to brag to us about. We’re always

looking for some of those.

Hunter Kurtz: As you know, we will be getting our closeout guidance out here

shortly, hopefully in the next few months. Then we start closing

out grantees. That will be exciting.

David Noguera: I certainly hope so.

Hunter Kurtz: We’re having some internal clearance problems. But as soon as

we get that out, we’ll be able to publish our guide that we’re



working to get out, and that will provide you some more clarity as

to what the mechanics of the actual closeout will be.

Amber Buening: So we have another question from Ann Chaney. So Ann, you’re

unmuted if you want to go ahead with your question.

Hunter Kurtz: Hello, Ann.

Participant: Hey, how are you guys?

Hunter Kurtz: Wonderful.

David Noguera: Good. How’s it going today?

Participant: Pretty good. It’s like kids in the back seat of the car going, “Are

we there yet? Are we there yet?”

Hey, I sent this in, but I don’t know if I used this chat thing

correctly. But is there something weird going on with the program

income? When we receipt program income in DRGR and we then

do a voucher to disperse it, twice now we’ve had this strange

message saying that we’ve, like, extended more program income

than we’ve receipted, which isn’t actually true. But it kind of locks

up the system. We couldn’t navigate to the next page.

Ryan Flannery: Yeah, there is. This is Ryan. There is something going on. I’ve

discussed this in the past couple of webinars that we’ve done. But

yeah, there is something in the system. Typically it has to do with

when there’s a voucher that has program funds and program

income. It’s sort of double counting one of those line items, and

usually it’s a program income line item. So what the system sees

is that you have more program income drawn than you actually do.

So if you have a situation where that calculation would put you

above what your program income receipts are, then it’s going to

cause problems.

So what we have now is an ongoing recurring data correction

taking place. And that’s taking place every Monday, Tuesday, and

Thursday, to reconcile whatever outstanding drifts – we call it

financial drift – and whatever is going on, the contractors can

identify it, the activities that are affected, and then they can put it

back in balance.

So if it’s something that you see on a Monday morning and you

still see it the next day, that’s certainly something to let me know

about. Or if there’s a specific issue that you – be it some kind of



deadline or you’re trying to make a draw to go to a closing or

whatever it might be that’s super pressing, just let us know and

we’ll try to work with the contractors to get something done

sooner. But I think typically we’re seeing it’s three times a week.

And we think that should sufficient for the most part. And we’ve

also seen the instances where people have been reporting it. So I

think we’re mopping things up before grantees are seeing it take

place for the most part.

Participant: So, Ryan, if we just did separate vouchers, one for the program

funds and one for the program income, would that keep the –

Ryan Flannery: It’s worth a shot. That could definitely be – it could work. And if

you do that and you are not getting those errors, those

discrepancies, then please let me know because that’s a good

work-around for people, so we can let them know. Now, we also

have hopefully an emergency release coming out in May to fix this

issue so that we won’t have to deal with it anymore. But until then

that could potentially be a good work-around.

Participant: All right. One other quick question. For those of us who are

receiving program income, someday we’re going to have to set up

a revolving loan fund. It’s the only way to make this thing go

away. There will still be money for NSP eligible activities, but it’s

the only way we’re ever going to get our grant closed out. Are we

going to have any webinars, any in-depth training [Crosstalk]

Jennifer Hylton: So there is a guidance out on revolving loan funds now, and I don’t

know if you’ve seen that. I think it’s a policy alert.

Hunter Kurtz: And we could definitely do a webinar on revolving loan funds if

that is something that you’re interested in, Ann. We’ll just do it

for you [Laughter].

Participant: Well, that’s just because I’m slower than the average bear. But if

feels like that would be helpful.

Hunter Kurtz: I think that makes a lot of sense.

Ryan Flannery: And this is Ryan. I’ll say you’re not alone. I’ve talked with

several grantees who are sort of in the same situation as you, which

is probably not that bad of a problem to be in, where if you have

program income coming in and you have to actually get at your

grant fund at some point in time. The alternative is the reciprocal,

that it’s probably a worse problem. But I think it’s a good point. It

would make sense to have a webinar on both the mechanics of a



revolving fund and how you set it up. And then also how we deal

with it in DRGR.

Participant: Okay. And those were my only questions, and so thank on both

counts.

Jane Bilger: That’s good. Thank you, Ann. We have a couple of written

questions. Follow-up, Angelia Briggs. This is the question earlier

about selling properties to very low income households and

concerns with the high prices. They have offered second

mortgages and they’ve increased the down payment assistance.

And the follow-up question is, “Is it possible to lower the sales

price?”

David Noguera: Certainly. One of the things you can always do, though, instead of

lowering the sales price – because many neighbors often complain

that that will bring down property values for the neighborhood – is

increase the secondary mortgage. So the sales price is still the

same. The home buyer just has to come up with fewer dollars out

of pocket to purchase it.

Hunter Kurtz: So in other words you’re offering – if you already have purchased

and acquired the home for say $100,000 and it’s all NSP funds,

rather than selling the home for $75,000 and having a soft second

for $25,000 you’d just sell the home for $25,000 and have a soft

second for $75,000.

David Noguera: The sales price would still be $100,000.

Hunter Kurtz: Right. It would just increase your soft second.

Jane Bilger: Okay, thanks. We have a written question from Deborah McCrae.

“An NSP multi-family unit receiving funds from a housing

authority, and it’s also a police substation and abuse shelter. Does

the housing authority supersede NSP to allow this to happen? This

does not seem to meet a national objective.”

And I apologize, but that’s how it’s written.

David Noguera: I remember hearing about a substation in the past, a police

substation. A mobile station or something.

Jennifer Hylton: Have there been NSP funds that were used to develop it?



David Noguera: So the NSP funds were used to develop – is it just the substation or

is it the entire housing project, and there’s a substation in the

housing project? I’m not sure.

Hunter Kurtz: The easy answer is, much like that HOM E and NSP question, if

there are other sources of funding, then you’re okay. You could

just say that the public housing authority is funding –

Jennifer Hylton: If there’s housing units, you’re saying.

Hunter Kurtz: Right, if there’s housing units. I think we’re assuming that you’re

talking about some sort of multi-family project with a substation in

it. And you’re asking whether or not the NSP could pay for the

substation. Well, if you’re only funding the project with 50

percent NSP funds and 50 percent funds from the public housing

authority, then you’re fine. You could just say that the NSP

purchased only the 50 percent of the other project. I think we’ve

got to figure out whether or not the substation would be eligible.

David Noguera: We’ve had that question in the past. And I think we were saying

that you may be able to do the substation as a public facility, but

that would probably only be under NSP1, not 2 or 3.

Hunter Kurtz: But I think they probably should write this question in. I think we

need to get a little more details on this and we’ve got to get some

more details and spend a little more time thinking about this. So if

you could go onto our A&Q website and write this question up,

send it in. And somewhere in there put direct to HUD and that you

were asked to send it directly to us during the webinar. And I’ll

get it and get back to you.

Jane Bilger: Deborah, so if you could follow up and send that in directly on

question and answer website, you’d be able to get a clearer answer

and a more detailed answer with all of the nuances.

The next question we have in writing is Darrell Swinton. Darrell is

an NSP2 consortium member and has completed a number of

units. And the dollars per the agreement with the city – we have

units that have not been sold yet. And per the agreement it states

that after the contracts any program income from our original can

be kept to do more units. And the question is “What’s the process

to do this with the lead member of the consortium?”

Hunter Kurtz: I’m sorry.



David Noguera: Well, here’s the thing. If the units have not sold and you’re

waiting for the sales proceeds to carry out additional units, I don’t

see much of an option for you there. I guess the first thing you

should probably do is touch base with the lead consortium member

and see if there is any additional funding maybe that they could

move around within the consortium to enable you to keep going.

But from a HUD standpoint, there is – if the homes haven’t sold

yet, I don’t see a way of you freeing up cash to keep buying more

homes.

Hunter Kurtz: Yeah. Unfortunately, a lot of this is sort of in between you and the

lead consortium member. And we don’t have a whole lot of say

into the way that you guys have established the program and how

the program income is moved from one sub-recipient to another.

And so that really is up to you and the lead consortium member.

David Noguera: But I will say this, as I said earlier. If you’re having a problem

moving properties, put in a request for TA. We could always have

one of our TA providers look at what you’re doing to market the

homes, what condition the homes are in, who may be interested in

purchasing them, or just why you haven’t been able to move them.

Hunter Kurtz: And we’re also having a webinar on that May 2nd about

marketing. So you might want to check out that, too.

Jane Bilger: Do we have any questions over the phone?

Amber Buening: Not currently.

Jane Bilger: Deborah McCrae has some follow-up information. This is the

housing substation shelter question. But I have to say it’s still

confusing, Deborah, so I’m going to revert back to if you submit

the question directly to HUD and we can work out all of the details

with you.

Darrell Swinton has a follow-up on what’s the reporting

requirements on the new units. And this refers to units developed

outside the NSP target area.

David Noguera: I didn’t get that piece. You’re saying you have some units – were

they developed with NSP funds?

Jane Bilger: It says, “What are the reporting requirements and can new units be

developed outside the NSP target area?”



Hunter Kurtz: You’re still going to need to amend your action plan to include

new target areas until closeout, right?

David Noguera: Right.

Hunter Kurtz: So even though you’ve met your expenditure requirement and still

have program income to expend, you still need to work within the

parameters of the program.

David Noguera: Of the target area.

Hunter Kurtz: Yeah. And you can change that, but you need to follow the

process to change that.

David Noguera: Yeah. Whether it be your line of credit funds or your program

income, your limitations on where you can develop are based on

those established target areas. In essence that’s what you’ve told

the citizens of your community where you’re going to be spending

those funds. So now if you are looking to spend those funds

somewhere else, then they will need to be notified.

Jane Bilger: Darrell, hopefully that answers your question. And certainly if

there’s follow-up we can try to answer it here or you can submit a

question online.

Lee Radtke has a question regarding scattered site rental. “Are

there sample leases available online?”

David Noguera: Yes. We have a number of toolkits that are on our website that

should include sample leases. And we’re actually going through a

number of docs that were developed for other grantees right now,

and we’ll be posting some of those soon. So you should be able to

find sample leases on there. If you have trouble finding it in the

toolkit, just submit an email on the ask a question site, and we’ll

send you a sample lease.

Hunter Kurtz: And if those sample leases aren’t enough for you, feel free to

request some technical assistance. We can do some on-call TA

and get you some help with that.

Jane Bilger: Okay, thank you very much. Ruth Simmons has another question.

I encourage you, Ruth, to sign on so we can answer your questions

directly, because you seem to have a lot. Thank you. So the

question is, “Will the guide that’s coming out regarding closeout

distinguish closeout requirements between the NSP recipients that



are CDBG communities and those that are not CDBG

communities?”

Hunter Kurtz: Yeah. We’re going to do – we’ll have a lot of conversations about

that. And we’re actually going to have a number of webinars on

that. We’re going to do webinars for the different types of

grantees. So we will definitely address all of those issues here in

the near future.

David Noguera: Yeah. There will be one set of rules for NSP grantees that are

entitlement communities under CDBG versus those that are either

nonprofits or not entitlement communities. So it’s coming, and I

hope we can share it with you sooner rather than later.

Jane Bilger: Darrell Swinton has a follow-up. “We have contracts on the units,

but they haven’t closed yet.” This is referring back to the question

about the NSP2 dollars and the question about anticipating the

program income and what they can do with the program income.

They haven’t had issues with the sale of the units, it’s just they

haven’t closed yet. So just a clarification on that.

Hunter Kurtz: It’s still an issue between you and your lead consortium member

about how program income is distributed. That’s not something

we have really any say in, how you guys have set up that

agreement.

David Noguera: But it’s good to know. If there’s another piece to the question that

we’re not answering, let us know.

Hunter Kurtz: Yeah. Call in and we’d be happy to talk to you.

Jane Bilger: Lois Colson-Casey has asked if we can post the written questions.

We will be having follow-up of the recording of this Q&A webinar

session as well as a transcript of it. So you’ll be able to get the

written questions at that point, Lois.

I encourage folks, any other questions you have, either to ask over

the phone or in writing. Hopefully the ones that have been asked

so far can spur some of your thoughts and your questions.

Hunter Kurtz: Many of you don’t know that David is a classically trained opera

singer. So he will be singing shortly. [Laughter]

David Noguera: Singing my way home.



Jane Bilger: I don’t know if that’s going to encourage people to ask questions

or – we all want to hear him sing.

Hunter Kurtz: Unfortunately, he is not a classically trained opera singer.

David Noguera: But we don’t want to beat the dead horse here, but we’ll give you a

few minutes to gather your thoughts.

Hunter Kurtz: While we’re waiting I’ll just quickly go over what we have

upcoming webinars on. On April 18th we’re going to have a

webinar on buying NSP properties in competitive markets. On the

23rd we’ll have another question and answer session. On May 2nd

we’re going to have marketing and disposition strategies for NSP

properties. And then on May 7th we’ll have another question and

answer. A couple of webinars that we’re still working on, but

those are the ones that are set in stone between now and the middle

of May.

I will say that on June 18th – a little ways away, but still – we’re

going to have a DRGR webinar, which we’re all excited about.

Ryan Flannery: I am particularly excited, Hunter. [Laughter]

Hunter Kurtz: Do we have any more questions? If not, I think – thank you all for

another great webinar. Thank you, CSH and Jane for putting this

together. And you all have a great Thursday afternoon.

Jane Bilger: Just one close-out. We do have a follow-up survey. We want to

hear from you. We can always improve and enhance the materials

in these webinars. So please complete the survey on your screen

and give us that feedback. If you have additional questions, you

can always submit them that way as well. So thank you very

much.

Hunter Kurtz: I just want to clarify something. If you have additional questions,

don’t submit them on the SurveyMonkey. Please go to the ask a

question website and submit them. We don’t get the questions

from the SurveyMonkey for a little bit.

Jane Bilger: That’s right. But certainly if you have comments for other

improvements or other topics for the webinars, we welcome those.

Hunter Kurtz: Yeah. The SurveyMonkey is the place to put them.

David Noguera: Thank you guys.



Hunter Kurtz: Thank you everybody.

David Noguera: Thanks for joining us this afternoon.

Jane Bilger: Take care.

[End of Audio]

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