New federal grant program
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has recently unveiled the new Tenant Resource Network (TRN) which offers grants to empower tenants and preserve multi-family assisted housing. Through the new network, HUD has awarded nearly $5 million to 15 nonprofit organizations “in an effort to help low-income tenants receiving Section 8 project-based rental assistance and to preserve affordable housing.”
The purpose of the TRN is to make grants to qualified nonprofit organizations to assist, inform, educate and engage tenants living in certain Section 8-assisted properties at risk of losing affordability protections or project-based rental assistance.
“The Tenant Resource Network is designed to help working families who are at greatest risk of being priced out of their rental market,” said Carol Galante, HUD’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Housing. “The whole purpose of this program is to empower families living in HUD-assisted housing, giving them the information and options they need to stay in their homes.”
HUD is awarding grants to the following nonprofit tenant assistance organizations:
HUD says that one goal of the TRN program is to assist tenants living in project-based Section 8 housing regarding their rights, responsibilities and options when a property owner ‘opts-out’ the program, pre-pays their mortgage, or repeatedly fails to meet HUD’s housing standards.
The second purpose of the program is preservation of HUD-assisted affordable housing by engaging tenants in efforts to preserve eligible properties as affordable housing.
TRN is a new program developed under the authority of Section 514 of the Multifamily Assisted Housing Reform and Affordability Act of 1997 (MAHRA). The TRN Program targeted certain Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) which include a high proportion of TRN-eligible housing units.
Summary of grants
The grants given to each organization varied not only in amount, but in what the ultimate use of funds will be, as outlined in the document below:
[ba-pdfviewer pdfurl=”https://theamericangenius.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/HUD-GRANTS.pdf” width=”100%” height=”800px”]
