Legislative Update – More news

RENTAL ASSISTANCE RECAP

A Harris County/City of Houston Rental Assistance webinar recap.

By STEPHANIE GRAVES, HAA Legislative Chair, with BRADLEY PEPPER, Vice President of Government Affairs

IN JUNE, HAA hosted a webinar featuring representatives from the Houston-Harris County Emergency Rental Assistance Program (HHC ERAP) who discussed the reallocation process for duplicate rental assistance payments, as well as updates to the Eviction Intervention Program.

As most of us know, over the last two years many properties received rental assistance payments from Texas Rent Relief and also received payments for the same months from the Houston-Harris County program. Effective June 1, the Houston-Harris County program has implemented a duplicate payment reallocation process through which a tenant can update their application to allow for allocation of payments to additional months, with an associated reduction in recapture requirements.

This process begins with an email to the landlord from Houston-Harris County stating that you could be eligible for a reallocation of duplicated payments for different months that your tenant resided on your property. There will be a link in the email sent for you to complete the application process.

To move forward with the reallocation, you must: • Confirm that you will participate in fund reallocation. • Select the months that you will credit your tenant. • Provide documentation (if available) proving that funds have been reallocated on behalf of your tenant. • NOTE: You must complete the entire application in the next 14 days, or your application will no longer be eligible for reallocation.

In determining tenant eligibility for reallocation, HHC ERAP will review three criteria: 1. Residence: Did the tenant live on the property during months selected for reallocation? 2. Income: We must re-certify that tenants still meet the program’s income limits. 3. Max Assistance: The maximum amount of rental assistance allowed by Treasury guidelines is 15-18 months.

After the program completes review of the Landlord Reallocation Form and confirms eligibility, a request will be sent to the tenant to complete the reallocation application. The tenant will then confirm the reallocation months and submit current income documentation. This will need to be completed within 14 days. Once the HHC ERAP program staff verify tenant income and eligibility, the reallocation request will be approved.

Even with this process in place, there are still numerous questions and scenarios that we have submitted to Houston/Harris County for further detail. Please contact us at govaffairs@haaonline.org for more information regarding FAQ’s and other details on recapture reallocation.

Eviction Intervention Program

In addition to the new process for recapture reallocation, the HHC ERAP staff has provided updates on the Eviction Intervention Program, which was formally focused on general rental assistance.

Unlike the previous Emergency Rental Assistance Program, all rental assistance cases for HHC ERAP are now focused on tenants in the eviction process. They estimate an approximate 28-day turn around time per case.

To be eligible for assistance in the HoustonHarris County program, a tenant must have an eviction case number. Tenants should submit a new application if they applied for rental assistance before and are now in eviction court.

Landlords must be enrolled in the program for tenants to receive rental assistance. The program is voluntary and you are not required to accept rental assistance or participate in the program because you or a property has done so in the past.

If eviction has not been filed or a tenant has already been evicted from the unit, they are not eligible to receive funds.

As this process continues, and it changes and adapts as funding levels change, we will continue to update HAA members on the status of the program.

City Updates

City of Houston

Last month, the Houston Permitting Center created the new “Customer Experience Team.” This team will be dedicated to supporting the customer experience by triaging all customer project issues, connecting customers to the right subject matter experts and working to provide customers with a same-day response to their questions.

You can reach this team through the Contact Us page, Live Chat, or by emailing directly to askhpc@houstontx.gov. For project-specific questions, please have your project number or site address ready. You can also call 832-394HELP (4357).

City of Stafford

For those with properties in the City of Stafford, we wanted to provide an update the new fire inspection fees that will be effective on October 1.

You may recall that in 2021, the city was considering requiring an “assembly permit” fee of $250 per apartment building. HAA worked with City of Stafford officials to adopt an alternative to that onerous fee, ultimately supporting the city in implementing a sliding scale fee that would be calculated per unit starting with $5 for the first year, $7.50 for the second year, then $9 thereafter.

The first year fee was set at $5 per unit and the assembly occupancy type only attached to the areas residents can congregate, typically one building per property. As stated, year two will begin October 1 and the per unit fee adjusts to $7.50 and the assembly occupancy type continues to only be for areas where residents can congregate.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

If you have a problem or question, call the HAA main line at 713-595-0300 and ask for Government Affairs.