Sneak Preview: HUD Urged To Consider ESG-CV Grantee Challenges
(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) Now that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has extended the deadline for recipients to spend funds received under the Emergency Solutions Grants Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act (ESG-CV) program, the HUD Office of Inspector General (OIG), in a recent report, urged the agency to consider recipient feedback concerning challenges faced when agency officials assess recipient risk.
Congress provided $4 billion under the CARES Act (Pub. L. 116-136) for the ESG-CV program in two rounds of funding. During the first round, it allocated $1 billion under the traditional annual ESG formula to recipients. It later provided $2.96 billion in a second round under a separate formula “for the benefit of unsheltered homeless, sheltered homeless and those at risk of homelessness, to geographical areas with the greatest need based on factors to be determined by HUD, such as risk of transmission of COVID-19, high numbers or rates of sheltered and unsheltered homeless, and economic and housing market conditions” as determined by HUD.
The ESG-CV funding represented a 1,379% increase to the regular federal fiscal year 2020 annual ESG appropriation. ESG-CV funds are to be used to prevent, prepare for and respond to COVID-19 among individuals and families who are homeless or receiving homeless assistance and to support additional homeless assistance and homelessness prevention activities to mitigate the impacts created by the pandemic. The CARES Act also authorized HUD to waive, or make available alternative requirements, for certain provisions of any statute or regulation under the traditional ESG program.
Eligible recipients under the program are states, metropolitan cities, urban counties and U.S. territories. Subrecipients may be local governments — which can pass-through funds to public housing agencies and local development authorities — and private nonprofit organizations.
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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