The Week Ahead: Allocating Homeowner Assistance Funds

On Friday, October 15 at 10:00 a.m. CDT, the Urban Institute presents a virtual event exploring the data and geography of distressed borrowers, along with a new tool to help policymakers and agency staff allocate funds. During the “Deploying the Homeowner Assistance Fund: How States Can Get Help to Those Who Need It Most” webinar, attendees will hear from policymakers, housing industry experts, and state representatives discussing the challenges, roadblocks, and solutions to deploying Homeowner Assistance Funds.

As more than one million homeowners will exit forbearance plans over the coming months, states are solidifying plans to disperse nearly $10 billion from the federal Homeowner Assistance Fund (HAF). The fund is designed to prevent foreclosures, losses of utilities, and other hardships that have emerged during the pandemic. Taking cues from the distribution of Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA), as well as the Hardest Hit Fund from the Great Recession, states can deploy these funds most strategically by identifying borrowers at greatest risk of default, as well as by supporting homeowning households of color before time runs out.

Speakers include:

• Michael Neal, Senior Research Associate, Housing Finance Policy Center, Urban Institute
• Daniel Pang, Research Assistant, Housing Finance Policy Center, Urban Institute
• John Walsh, Research Analyst, Housing Finance Policy Center, Urban Institute
• Meg Burns, Executive VP, Housing Policy Council
• Will Corbett, Senior Advisor, Emergency Housing Programs, U.S. Department of the Treasury
• Lisa Sitkin, Senior Staff Attorney, National Housing Law Project
• Stockton Williams, Executive Director, National Council of State Housing Agencies
• Jerusalem Demsas, Policy Reporter, Vox (moderator)

Click here for more information or to register for this event.

Here's what else is happening in The Week Ahead:

• MBA’s Forbearance and Call Volume Survey (Monday)
• MBA Weekly Applications Survey (Wednesday)
• Realtor.com Weekly Housing Market Recap (Wednesday)
• Legal League Webinar: "Investors Perspective on the Restart of Foreclosures" (Wednesday)
• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (Thursday)
• U.S. Department of Labor's Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report (Thursday)
• Black Knight weekly forbearance data (Friday)
• House Subcommittee on Housing, Community Development and Insurance Remote Hearing: "Zoned Out: Examining the Impact of Exclusionary Zoning on People, Resources, and Opportunity" (Friday)
• Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies Webinar: "Do Older Homeowners With Mortgages Spend Less on Pharmaceuticals?" (Friday)