Sign Minnesota RFP Now

Document type sign rfp minnesota now

yeah we do want to get going i put my video on but i'm just staring at a blank screen here so i don't see you but hopefully you can see me and a powerpoint presentation so um i believe the first slide is logistics so that is um quick agenda review as we as we said and then to make sure you know that this webinar is being recorded and there will be time at the end for questions um and the answers that we give to those questions uh will be posted on the grants program page and that's something that we can do and then here's a great little dialog box that shows you your controls and what you can do as an attendee in order to um use your microphone share questions in the chat um and i'll be part of a team there's quite a few of us from minnesota housing who will look at the chat repeat questions for one another if you think that's necessary um and that toolbar is usually on the upper right hand side of your screen we'll also use the chat to try and communicate if people are having technical issues so our first official slide and welcome is to talk a bit about our mission at minnesota housing but housing is the foundation for success so we collaborate with individuals communities and partners that's you to create preserve and finance affordable housing and before i get into this next slide on [Music] the federal program that we're here to talk about just a reminder that in everything that we do at minnesota housing until last year with uh the kovid housing assistance program in 2020 not a lot of it is direct to tenants and clients like this um especially not from our office uh straight to members of the public in such a big way so we have been on an amazing learning curve to take this mission and apply it to programs that work in public assistance in this way so agenda we're doing the welcome and introductions and then we will run through this program it's a great new acronym you get to learn covert 19 emergency rental assistance which is cera um do an overview and core principles talk about some of the program activities i will hand it off um eligible expenses the review criteria and scoring timelines and then definitely as i said we have time for questions so i've talked quite a bit in quite a few audiences about this program um the covid emergency housing assistance program is a federal program this is a new bill that was passed the last week of december or signed the last week of december that is not some it's not general coveted funds coming to the state and then being turned into a rent assistance program it's a rent assistance program straight off the top from the federal uh government and it is for renters it is not for homeowners that's a kind of easy yes no question that the federal government has answered this is a rental program and it's for people who've experienced hardship in the colvin 19 pandemic you may say to yourself let's everyone but it's really about housing stability and um helping households with that rent assistance so the federal funds have landed in minnesota we have them but the treasury department sets the rules and we have late breaking news um we i won't be able to pull up a link while we're on here but um if you really like reading federal guidance the treasury put out some guidance in january and then said they'd be updating it and the new guidance just hit about an hour and a half ago so that is the late breaking news it's it's good um we're excited to see these updated guidelines they will help us continue to craft the program but that has put us in a little bit of a limbo while we've waited for that information um so now it's a nice thing to know we can kickstart and keep moving so the formula that decided how much money comes to um every location across the country said 375 million to minnesota um we'll go back one whoops i'll look at my copy it's slide slide seven so we're trying to be okay and so the local government's just the second bullet point um directly took funds from the treasury so those are not state programs through local governments those are straight to the local governments but we're coordinating for 85 million dollars of the total 375 and then minnesota state received 290 million it is a program that serves the entire state so there's overlap so households who live on tribal lands members of tribal nations are eligible to work with their tribe to get funding their tribe has funds and also eligible through the state program minneapolis has their own bucket of funds but uh people who live in minneapolis renters are also eligible through the state so we are running a statewide program there's overlap and then there's the big difference the coveted housing assistance program of 2020 and the cera program are different we are working sort of federal rules governed and then um turning that into a program with the flexibility we've been awarded is what we work on at the state level um on the next slide um is the what are we talking about today and so we're talking about the infrastructure of how we will run this program 10 of our funds um of the state's portion of the funds can be used for administrative expenses which includes the services that we are looking for in this rfp we have made some decisions that are pretty different if you were familiar with the cobit housing assistance program to this one and ten percent actually is not a lot considering the human resource needs so we have um centralized our intake which is a partnership two on one we and call center which is partly 2-1-1 um an online application and that software is under development it is different from the one last year um and application processing and payment processing that's when we'll spend the most money and time and that is happening at a processing company that is essentially a a large staffing company that will have people who sit and look in the software that materials that have been submitted by tenants and landlords all day long figuring out what um eligibility what further documentation is required payee status and then hitting the button to submit for payment with the bank that we're using so that is all centralized that is very different from the program last year so this field partner rfp it's really to specialize and to look at the things that you do which is why you're here in the human centered approach to providing outreach and the one-on-one support that people need to access and receive assistance paying their rent um so i believe that jessica my colleague is having trouble getting on as a um panelist but i will keep going but she's here hi so uh i believe the quick rundown is me so on the who is eligible renter households so they do need to be within the state boundaries of minnesota but that's really it homeowners we know that they're under a lot of stress and need assistance but they are not eligible it's for 80 area meeting income households and below and that is adjusted by family size and by county across the state they um households do need to share that they have experienced financial hardship and that they risk housing instability or loss of housing um without this assistance but then there's also prioritization it's a little bit vague in the bill so i'll hand it to jessica to describe how we're approaching it sure so hi everyone jessica deegan director of federal affairs at minnesota housing helping rachel with the stand-up of the program so talk a little about prioritization in the treasury guidelines there are two populations we are required to prioritize the application process populations and households who have no more than 50 of area median income and households who would be eligible for unemployment for the past 90 days they have been unemployed or eligible for unemployment for 90 days and the way we're going to approach this in our program is to provide more of a gating strategy on how applications come in at first for the first opening of the application we're intending it will be open for these priority populations haven't firmed up exactly what that time period is um but also how we're establishing gates are originally uh we haven't talked about all eligible i guess we talked about eligible expenses but for households who have backed rent or back utilities due it will be open up to those first in our phase one approach and then later as those back rent back utility bills are paid more we'll open it up to households who only have forward-looking rent um so more more to come on the details of that but that's how we're imagining doing the prioritization for the program yeah just get that the prioritization is a strategy because we know so many people are in need um to address those who have if there's back rent and back utilities there's an eviction moratorium now um but they're they're at a great risk of that housing instability or loss of housing um and so we want to make sure we process those applications get through them because we will on the next slide talk about expenses but in the last statement here the bold so landlords can apply on behalf of their tenants but because the application requires so much information about attendant household the renter both needs to consent and that's in the bill language but also participate they would need to provide quite a bit of information in the application in order to um really get to a full complete application so yes it's regis consent but really there's a participation element so those eligible expenses again a little confusing but it's something we'll work through as partners if you do end up partnering with us in the rfp so households are eligible for 12 months of assistance think back and think forward and plus a three-month three-month extension which is optional of course we depend if we have enough funds and is tied to maintaining the household stability so that past due rent can go all the way back to um mid-march of 2020 including and utility costs um so if the household's eligible for 12 months and they have past due in 2020 and they received three months perspective in 2021 they could get to 12 months in then 2021 just to lay out some of those time frames and then for future payments um so long as a household's arrears that are eligible have been addressed we i have the opportunity to provide three months of assistance forward thinking um three months at a time and that total of assistance back and forward there's a lot of questions about it that overlaps whether it's utilities or rent or utilities and rent um but we're not too worried about that right now we're waiting on guidance um can't exceed that 15 months total 12 plus 3 extension and we do believe that rent for manufactured homes would definitely qualify it's a rented home as well as the lot rent though if anything changes of the treasury guidance we would certainly report out on what we've learned but we expect to serve households and manufactured homes for their lot rent portion not for the loan portion or for their home ownership costs in their home retail rachel i just want a little bit past that because uh quite a few a couple of people posted that they are having some uh audio issue so i just want to make sure that people are listening okay so uh if you're having a hard time uh with your audio can you raise your hand okay maybe they posted in the beginning and maybe they fixed audio issues so thank you and then also another question uh it's about the um the privatization uh mentioned uh in earlier slide either jessica or rachel can you go over a little bit more about it because uh the question was uh if the we are privatizing those population it could be a very small window of people i thought the slide nine or eight um yeah they must prioritize those households yeah so there's a couple different things that jessica mentioned one is the timing of releasing applications to the public so we will release with what we call a gating strategy which we know from other states and we know from our other programs that there's a lot of need and our processing capacities are only so large so we are gating as in we will invite people to apply who meet the criteria of having back payments due they are already overdue to start and then pretty quickly afterwards when we know we're caught up and we can catch up um open the applications there's not really any technology behind this it's simply how we communicate say okay now if you need assistance with forward rent so you've been keeping up you need assistance with forward rent um come in and apply and we want to time those gates so the people who apply have as short a window as possible between the date they apply and when they receive the financial assistance we already know just based on what we've learned in other programs that's many business days or weeks um but trying not to make it months and then on prioritization this comes from the federal bill and it's again it's not saying those who don't meet prioritization won't be served but jessica i don't know if you have other thoughts on how to clarify the prioritization piece just that our thought was really that application would be open for those priority priority populations for a small very small window of time at the beginning of that phase so maybe it's five days maybe it's a week i don't know the actual number yet but so it would be very quick while before it's opened up to everybody beyond those priority populations so it's we have to prioritize it under the law and we're doing it for a short window and also really part of the marketing strategy yeah we can always circle back when everyone has full attendee capabilities to talk about it but it's not unlimited money but it's a lot of money and we really hope we can serve um a lot of households we also know looking at the data it's up on our website from the coveted housing assistance program the vast majority of those who applied for assistance with that program would have met the 50 area median income threshold okay there will be another q a maybe available after the presentation but since it's a follow question i will just share before we go um the next so the question is who the gate for the first resident supplying close once you open other gates or will those that have a background to old continue to be able to apply for the duration of this grant period yes um the the gates are to start a rolling application process that wouldn't close unless we ran out of money um so we certainly we really just are looking at we haven't had a program for rent assistance in minnesota for a few months and so there's a backlog so we expect day one to be a big day a lot of applications so gating is just to slow down the entrance but then we will catch up we'll keep up and we'll stay up with those applications on a rolling basis thank you yeah i think we are now at slide 11 um and the payments work so uh the payments do need to go directly to where the funds are owed so to the landlord um our utility company and so our processor will be set up to do all the payee information and contact those entities to get the funds out and to a manufactured park owner if it's for the lot rent but there is a good thing in the bill which is that if essentially the payee the landlord utility company won't accept or doesn't respond to our processor to get paid then this was just clarified to be a shorter time frame which we appreciate in the faq's updated but then if they don't participate non-responsive then the payment can go to the household the bill is very clear that that payment to the household is not wages or and doesn't affect benefit eligibility under the federal rules we have a little work to do to be able to tell you that's the same for state um but certainly on the federal side or any program any state program that's funded in part or in whole by federal dollars which covers quite a lot of food support and others um is all covered by that exemption which is is good news um i know it was a challenge with our um code housing assistance program to get funds out to people uh the last slide that's on my list before i hand it over is our core principles and values i can't take credit for for this um but i'm very proud to put this slide up we have a lot to do in a short amount of time and we're asking the same review um but we're also holding ourselves accountabl to these principles um that we are in all ways we are looking at this centering on the people um our strategies are meant to work best for those who would otherwise be left behind um across the state and every corner who have um progressive ability language that we are using anti-racist and race equity frightening in everything we do and the outcomes we are looking for um would also align with this core principle intentional strategies um we just went through a very early draft of the online application uh with these principles in mind we continue to you know re-evaluate if we're on track with these principles and how we ask questions the experience that a tenant has going through the workflows um and yeah that customer experience is meant to minimize stress and uncertainty as much as possible we can't take away that it's a complicated federal program we can do everything we can to screen people in find their eligibility do the work on our end that avoids burdening the household's tenants with the work on their end we will do this with as much transparency timeliness and flexibility as possible and then organizations and this is you by and for communities most impacted are critical partners for equitable outcomes this rfp as i hand over to my colleagues is a really important part of finding our way with these core principles and values and having an on the ground support network for the work that we we do with the households so all right i'm just looking at myself and blank screen so i am handing it off to um the next set of slides thanks rachel um so let's let's go a quick overview of the entire rfp so what are you here for what are we asking you to do as part of this program so what we put out is up to five million dollars for services it's not grants it's not a subrecipient model it is intended to help identify and serve persons who are least likely to know about the program or be able to navigate the application process on their own without assistance applicants for the rfp are encouraged to employ strategies to reach households who are over represented among those experiencing housing african-americans american indians people with disabilities veterans lgbtq persons think about how we can support populations least likely to apply and who are experiencing housing instability in terms of timeline program is expected to begin again this rfp program ideally as soon as possible ideally we would have contracts in place by march 18th and the program would operate through at least december 31st of 2021 it may be extended to march really subject to additional funding availability and and how treasury looks at next next iterations of how funding comes out so this may more to come so the next slide please eligible applicants to this rfp we're looking for demonstrated experience working with populations that are least likely to know about the program or be able to independently apply non-profit community-based organizations family homeless prevention and assistance program grantees covet housing assistance program administrators federally recognized tribes state judicial districts and local units of government are all eligible applicants for this program next slide please looking at broad coverage and we want to make sure that we're hitting all corners of the state with a network that we'll be putting together so we're asking that your geographic service areas include could be the entire state of minnesota a continuum of care region one or more cap regions counties judicial districts indian reservations of communities or cities of 85 000 or over next slide please at its heart this is a navigational services program the scope of work here on this slide talks through what that means so we would like for you to be able to create program awareness and market the program but really have staff to support households and to prepare and submit that application for assistance so that could be in person that could be over the phone or email we're also looking for organizations to provide culturally specific marketing and application assistance as appropriate we want a language plan including translation services offered and that there are multiple communication options in in your in your work and as i talked about could be meeting in person email mail text phone lots of options to work with an individual to get through the process and then also you would need to communicate with other program partners we have various marketing we have intake a central application process that's all happening and then with minnesota housing so you would become kind of part of a network of the bigger program as well next slide please program costs can include mileage travel costs to assist participants technology ppe if you're doing those in-person type of visits other direct costs with your program administration this program like the last program from treasury doesn't allow indirect administrative costs so just direct administrative costs not to exceed 10 next slide please so we have an exciting additional option uh that we through serve minnesota to make americors volunteers available for this process and for organizations who are doing this so we've partnered with serv minnesota and they've agreed to make americorps volunteers available to provide application assistance and other support if you're interested in obtaining americorps volunteers you would have to directly request that through serve minnesota and there's information attached to the rfp on how to do that we at minnesota housing won't have a role in that arrangement between you and serve minnesota but it will be helpful coming and it would be something you would put in your application on how many service hours or how many people maybe you might be using americorps members to come in so the americorps members are available in two cohorts march 22nd would be the first cohort that could begin and they do have a second cohort beginning june 6th so look at that documentation uncertain minnesota and do contact them if you have information or you have questions about that next slide please application and scoring so we'll start with capacity staffing and administrative capacity is sufficient needs to be sufficient to deploy the program we want organizations who can launch no later than april 15th but really again we would love to get things up and running and get contracts started as early as march 18th feasible and realistic number of households so think about how many households you'll be able to serve maybe if you're using americorps volunteer americorps volunteers that might increase your number but we really want to know how many households you think you will serve both from general outreach marketing perspective and that one-on-one navigation through an application process we're looking for creative and effective strategies to reach and engage all the populations we've been talking about and we want looking for organizations who have an ability to work with households who are high high stress trauma or have experiences with discrimination and marginalization in government systems really need to work through that in capacity next slide please equity i think we talked about it at the top and we'll talk about it again and again but the three main points we're looking for equity within the application are to demonstrate that you have culturally appropriate marketing access and service to populations who are systematic systemically impacted by housing and stability organization is owned or led by people of color indigenous individuals and or women and then that robust language plan that we talked about earlier having that within the application is important as well next slide please budget so we're looking for your budget clearly explained in the narrative we're looking for a reasonable budget and something that describes how the funds will be managed to last for the duration of the grant period so again as i talked about just a little earlier it's a it's a services contract and so it will be based on invoicing and your budget will be based on your both your marketing and outreach strategies and your individual navigation services next slide please so the components of the request is to have budget and a budget narrative and have a timeline for when you will be operational and have a timeline to issue funds uh to the recipient that that sorry that's a typo you will not be issuing funds or maybe that's us issuing funds but we can move to the next slide scoring methodology so we'll look at three buckets for scoring capacity equity and budget capacities of 100 points capacity is worth 50. we're looking at again what number of households estimated to be served staffing and administrative capacity your ability to launch those services again no later than april 15th your ability to provide creative and effective strategies and so on for equity it's those three same points we just talked about equity will be worth 30 points on the scoring and budget will be worth 20 points on the scoring for a review criteria funding selections will not be solely based on the application score and i think that's really important to note the review committee will evaluate the application scores in conjunction with the program's strategic priorities to provide statewide coverage and the applicant's ability to address equity and community need my next slide please hey joel hey justin i think this is where i'm picking up from you and taking over thank you yeah you bet so i'm gonna wrap up here last few minutes trying to be as clear as possible as uh as to what you're going to need if you do choose to submit an application next slide please perfect um so one a couple things we just want to highlight here is that our due date is um on thursday february 25th and i believe the closed date is at 4 30. um all information does need to be submitted and uploaded by that time anything after that date will not be accepted and if you don't have uh these um the full application and it's attached attachments uploaded by that time it will be considered an incomplete application and it will not be considered for funding so it's very important that you make sure to get all of the required upload information done in time by 4 30 on thursday we'll go over some of this a little bit more but the the uploads are going to be the application itself there's a separate signature page that you'll need to upload the budget that jessica talked about earlier and then these last two pieces of information we're going to talk about on the next slide so one's going to be the current financials that your organization has to submit and then the last would be the affirmative action cert form if you can go to the next slide please i think we'll talk about yep the financial documentation so depending on the gross revenue of your entire organization that's going to dictate which type of financial review you'll need to submit so as you can see if your entire organization's revenue for the year is under 50 000 then you're going to need to submit the board review financial statements if it's between 50 to 750 000 the 990 and your aging schedule will be the two things that are required or if your entire organization's budget is over 750 thousand dollars we'd we'd require your most recent certified financial audit next slide please and then um this is the affirmative action certification form there are links on um there's there's links from a variety of different places including our uh webpage and in the rfp guide itself that helps you understand that the affirmative action certification form is required and i'd encourage you to take a look at it now because depending on your organization if you don't have a form already submitted and approved um then you'll need you may need to take action before our due date so this is one that you probably do not want to wait until last minute on to give a review next slide please we're also identifying here that there are uh these high-level federal and contractual requirements that will be part of the contract that we send it to selected administrators we don't want anything to um sort of catch you off guard so we're just trying to flag these kinds of things for you now you can see that some of them are around record retention six years after the program is what we expect uh selected organizations to keep the documents um we will be uh because this is a reimbursed based model you will be submitting invoices on a monthly basis we're also going to be requiring certain kind of reports um over the grant period there's certainly going to be a final report that's due we may be asking for some quarterly reports as well to provide us the different kinds of activities and experiences that you may be having during that time period we expect organizations to have a conflict of interest policy stated as part of their documentation to run this program and then as we already talked about here we're going to have some affirmative action um requirement that you have to comply with and then there's going to be additional federal applicable laws that will be part of your contract that uh once you are selected it will be shared with you and you'll be able to review that during the due diligence phase next slide please so as i alluded to earlier here's the due date it is this uh this uh this thursday february 25th at 4 30 p.m um uh i think we may have some revised guidance on our web page uh the idea is that using the the sievent link which should be a fairly easy and user friendly tool that we've made available this time for those of you who apply to the chat program it's going to be something similar in sievent you'll upload your application your signature page your budget and i believe you'll also be uploading your affirmative action cert form um right in c event itself so those are four things you have to submit and then the fifth thing that you'll have to submit are those financial documents again depending on your organization's overall budget it's going to dictate what you submit and because that has confidential information on it we'll be using our secured uh upload tool um so that's the um that's the only upload that you'll have to do outside of cvet but it's very important that you do again if if any of these five documents are not included in the uploads your application will not be cons will be considered incomplete and will not be able to be reviewed so please please please uh triple check to make sure those five things are submitted if you have any questions at all about this uh we're providing an email at the end of the slide deck here please use that um we'd rather have you ask questions then make an assumption that oh that doesn't apply to me or i don't need to do that when it does and if you didn't do it again we wouldn't be able to review your application so please please make sure you get all those updated on time thanks next slide this is the timeline as you can see the the rfp again is going to be due on february 25th by 4 30. we will be making announcements by march 10th uh we're then going to give you about a week or so to complete your due diligence noting that we will be having a due diligence webinar the day after announcements are made um and that webinar is meant to really go much deeper on what the due diligence items will be make sure you know what they are how to submit them um we are operating under a quick timeline we'd love to have those completed within a week so that uh if the program um so that you can begin doing your work your piece of this program as early as march 18th um that is our target date i'm not sure that that's a hard firm date yet but that is the time frame that we're working with and you can see the aggressiveness in there yep no that's fine next slide please um when we get to the due diligence i kind of talked about this before we're going to go over the contract with you uh we're going to work with you to revise your budget that's based on the award that you actually get oftentimes you'll ask for something but it's not that exact amount so we'll need to revise that uh budget we'll work with you to create a work plan probably over uh the the march through december period so we can understand what you're proposing to do for th se activities we're going to need your duns number we're going to need your authorized contract signer information and then we'll need your eft authorization form as well next slide please we should be getting to the end here folks this is important if you're selected you'll uh if you're selected and you aren't already on the vendor registration we'll need to get you signed up there that will allow you to get your registration number which we'll need and then we'll also need your w9 and if you don't have a completed eft authorization form we'll need it at that time so again those are things that will review and due diligence but just want the flag for you now that those are things that are required for folks that we would select and i am now at the end of that phase as well so i think now we're going to be opening it up to any questions that folks have um i uh alyssa if you're on the screen i believe that you might be joining your or sharing your camera and facilitating this but for now so that we don't waste time i will just um kick it off and allow questions to be asked i believe you can either raise your little virtual hand by clicking the button and then g will unmute you you'll be able to ask your question or you can type a question into the chat feature in which that's been monitored as well uh somebody on our team would then read your question and who's ever most appropriate will provide your answer so love to open that up so you all can ask great questions right now so joel we have a uh three people already raised hand so i'll go first with your brenda walton brenda you are uh muted so you can share your question or comment brenda she may need to mute herself on her side too yeah i unmuted her okay if not then if she's not ready yet then i can go the next person eric eric beacon you are unmuted i did have a question hello can you hear me uh i didn't have a question right now i think i just hit the button accidentally okay that's okay i know sometimes it happens so thank you okay the next one is jacob young center where uh housing organization for uh native american youth in saint paul um i am wondering about the outreach component so with our actual client list right now we're probably in like the 60 to 100 people that we can outreach just from our own client list um would that be a successful application are you really looking at people who go beyond their personal client list and outreach into the community which we can be open to but we might not have the staff power to go out and do that sort of outreach um are you okay if we apply uh only looking at our internal client list or do you really want us to be in the community outreach game uh more than than that i guess that's that's what i'm trying to figure out does that make sense no yeah jacob thanks for your question i think i think it's a good question i'll take a first stab at certainly asking rachel and jessica to override or redirect as needed um i think the idea and the concept behind this field of partners rfp and if it hasn't been shared already i'd love to take just a minute to to share why why we're having this with chap uh so even though uh the coveted housing assistance program is is significantly different than what we're doing for the coven 19 um emergency rental assistance we received a lot of feedback from uh chap applicants and uh community workers and administrators of the chat program and one of the things that they shared with us that was one of the greatest struggles uh was that they weren't able to reach the populations that they were that they were serving or that they knew about or that they were connected with and they told us that despite the marketing and the outreach and and the awareness creation that we're trying to do that information still did not get to their populations um second thing they told us is that it really took time to navigate the old program and some of the folks that they were working with just uh weren't able to do that or didn't have the the broadband capacity to do that or even commute uh computer literacy to do that so this program is really designed to address those two huge equity issues that were brought to us so the idea that an app that somebody would apply an applicant just for their residents it's it could be an application but i think what we're looking for is a stronger outreach to say um who are the people in your community that you could reach to that otherwise we couldn't or otherwise the mainstream programs or marketing couldn't get to and something like that is going to be your strongest application i i would believe yeah panther is excellent and appreciated do we have any other uh raised hands g or any other questions quite a few uh amber amber newman you're the next hi uh i'm up in beltrami county in northwest minnesota what about applications where as a coordinator we're uh we're a foundation as a coordinator we we do the application and then we with the assumption that we're going to subcontract out parts of it to organizations like what jacob was talking about and their clientele and the clientele within their expertise and would work as more of the rapid turnaround collaborator jessica do you maybe want to take a first run at that response so i think we're open to subcontracts within the program certainly if if you feel that there are other organizations you'd like to partner with to do maybe the navigational services or these very specific pieces yeah it's definitely open to coordination i think in that aspect great yeah thank you and if i could just add on to that just if you could add clarity i think uh a difference but you know you you talked about this not being a grant but actually being a contract for service i think folks who may have experience working with us in a grantee relationship think of it as a them as a grantee and then they would have sub grantees and that we would have oversight of those subgrantees as well i think this model is a little bit different so could you just elaborate on that just for a moment sure yeah so because you're not carrying out the full program you're a contractor for us for this program you're carrying out a service to it and so that would be the same relationship you would have with anybody you would subcontract to it would not be somebody else carrying out the full program like our grantee model often is but rather you would be doing a similar contract for service with that entity if that's helpful clarification so in terms of a budget and and um what we would expect would we expect to see what they break out or what they're anticipating and who their partners are and how much they anticipate giving to each um each partner we would need that level of detail yes okay thanks jessica okay uh next is corey um you can share your question or comment corey okay now i'm unneeded i'm sorry did not mean to have two northwest minnesota questions right in a row um my question i put in the chat but i was just wondering if the if the state's thinking about making any um i don't know for so so for geographic regions across the whole state where it might be hard for agencies to put together an application this fast and to you know to make this happen is there any consideration of what the state can still do to help people in those maybe smaller geographic regions where we know we have people that are going to need the help but we maybe don't have um you know organization that has the capacity right now to to apply for this or to implement this kind of services right um because there might be a few but not as many um and there are some are more rural areas i can again i can take a first first run of that hey corey good to hear from you um you'll uh you um you probably won't be surprised to know that when we were getting feedback for this rfp um that that some of the feedback came back um and said well hey what about a coc that might want to apply um on behalf of its region or a cap agency so first thing you can see uh one of the differences between this program and the chat program when you're near geography is that we made cocs and a um a cap agency sort of an eligible coverage area so that could be easier aligned with uh again for example coc that wants to do that so we're open to it um i gosh i know the timeline is incredibly tight uh wish that it could be longer i know that all organizations like every single one is is over stretched right now when we look back to the chap application i think we have a similar timeline i think we might have even been a little bit less than what we ex or what we could afford applicants to provide in terms of the timeline um so so recognizing that it's incredibly fast uh we we still do need folks to be able to respond by the due date of the 25th i think one of the things that were we've done in our application itself is we've tried to make it very simple again one of the things that we got in our feedback from previous stakeholders is that the chap application was pretty simple um and the and folks wanted it to look like that and i think as you see as you look at this application you'll see that it's it's equal in terms of that kind of simplicity and the questions are are really only questions we've asked that we need answers on to make a selection so that's kind of a long-winded answer to say yes we know seven days is absolutely too short we're also under we're also operating under different kind of stresses and we know people in the community need the money we know people in the community needed money for uh applications from months ago so we're trying to balance as many competing demands as possible and although it is a quick turnaround time we hope that we've made an easy online application tool and easy application uh itself and that we're making ourselves as avail available as much as possible to respond to questions that you might have okay next is angela larson hi there um just a quick um hopefully time saving question for the affirmative action certification if we submitted one um that was signed with the crap application that is not expired we have to get a new form signed or can we just submit that same one jessica do you do you happen to know i do not so we'll have to confirm that and that's a good point um we are taking notes of all the questions that are asked here um and we'll be providing written answers to them and then we'll be taking any questions that we we receive from uh that we didn't answer today but that we got all the way up through noon tomorrow you can submit questions um uh to the um sarah website and we'll be providing written answers to all those questions hopefully by close of business on tuesday we might need a little bit of attitude depending how many questions we get uh but you can you can look on our website for a full q a at that point so that's one that we'll have to look into research and get back to you on okay next is teresa leonard teresa do you have any question or comment to share please omit yourself and ask them hello can you hear me yes we can hear you okay um yes i'm theresa leonard and i'm with community action partnership at hennepin county and we were a chap administrator and i know our staff has been super busy with that um and i've got a couple questions one you had mentioned that there is going to be changes to the intake and application process that's different from chap can you tell me um how intensive and how much of a difference it's going to be to implement the new processes and changes to fit to this new model yeah this is rachel i'll i'll start until we're just gonna know this really well also but so this rfp for assistance um separates out the work into specializations and asks you as community partners to focus on the person the the human centered part of this which is to work with communities to get that outreach out and then work with people who have the greatest barriers to access directly to help them get access there is an aspect of this which would be to to essentially virtually or or in person sit with a client and work with them in the application but the actual application process we moved to some bigger entities so we do hope to back up a little that the vast majority of people who find their way to this assistance get there by seeing advertising or getting some outreach and applying and getting assistance online maybe they call 211 who is our partner and get some assistance maybe a little technical help a little definitions help i don't know what household means and they get through the application and you wouldn't work with them but then there is a percentage of people who um will just need a greater level of assistance than anyone could really give them on the phone from two on one or a processing company greater than technical assistance greater than um one or two quick questions so i think i hope that answers your question but it's just a very different model or this specialization of um we're calling our field partners in this rfp focus on just a few key elements of the program rather than really having to work with the applications in the background work with payments figure out eligibility all of that is now held at a processing company whose staff do that work day in day out in one centralized office virtual but one centralized office with one set of managers who are floating questions up so that we can try to keep that off of your plate as the field partners and i have one other question um that did answer my question um and with the americorps opportunity that you mentioned do you know if the um volunteers that would be part of this if they have any experience in housing or with this kind of activity or we would have to train them and you also know if you can request somebody that speaks a specific language thanks for the question on that and i think some of some of the specifics may wish to reach out to serve minnesota on that but just to talk through a couple things is that um they won't necessarily be housing experienced volunteers but the thought is there would be training both sort of a global training for any americorps volunteer who gets involved in this program that we would provide and then but the responsibility would really fall on the the community partner in terms of training any further than that so not necessarily having any experience with housing or background in that way and then i will i'll just have to refer you to serve minnesota on the questions of language specificity and that sort of thing so i do encourage you to reach out she's very excited to hear from you all yeah and just to follow up on that um we um serve minnesota it knows you'll be reaching out knows that you're going to be reaching out in a in a small manner of time and that they need to be responsive so they are waiting for and expecting your calls so feel free to reach out and and use them okay thank you okay next is uh alisa johnsford all right awesome um yeah so first of all just want to thank you guys for doing this there's a tremendous need right now for rental assistance and utility assistance so thank you um i was just curious what the guidelines are on um undocumented individuals if they would be able to qualify for this or no there's nothing venting yeah all renters in minnesota are eligible and we uh in the application um there is no place where we ask someone uh to demonstrate or even provide a yes no question around their documentation status okay awesome thank you okay next is roxanna gauss can you please unmute yourself and share your question or comment okay can you hear me yep yep sorry about that um so yeah i have several questions i don't know if you have time for them but the main one i wanted to ask was um about the possibility of maybe tailoring our program to represent just a subset of the geographical area that we choose so say we choose to work in the metro area then would we be would we have to serve everyone in that geographic area or could we specify like you know we are aiming towards a particular religious group or a particular um like you know people of color that kind of thing because just to give you a background for the chap program we were subcontracted through the salvation army and they specifically um asked us to do it for the muslim community so that's w ere i'm coming from and because you know if it's everyone i don't know if we can handle that many people that's the only reason why i'm asking thank you so i would i would say in terms of your who so the first question i think of is around eligibility or what we really need so if you go back to um if you go to the application and it says select your geographic coverage area you have to be able to click at least one of those boxes and then be able to serve uh the populations within that area so if you're in the metro area i think the way it's phrased is i i think you could identify one county in the metro area or it may be um all uh all five or or five counties of metro i'm not exactly sure but you do have to go by whatever it says in terms of your outreach or marketing plan that's where i think um the creativity becomes to uh um get more um we can be more creative there like so if that's the coverage area that you're gonna provide what are the populations that would otherwise not know about or not be able to learn about this program and you can be able to target who who that audience is the awareness the marketing you know getting people to learn about this program all that can be done to a targeted audience i think the key where where we need to be careful is that um presumably who you're targeting the program to what they're going to be the people that if they need assistance to actually apply and navigate the system you're likely to be uh the organization that they're going to want to work with however uh if somebody else comes to your door and knocks on the door and says hey um can you help me navigate this program uh that's who you are that's who you you can't say no to based on a protected class you need to be able to serve anybody who knocks on your door in the same way you might uh the target audience of who you're marketing to just okay do you have anything to add to that no i agree with your assessment it's marketing targeting uh but having to be open that's great explanation thank you should i ask a few more questions should i let other people get a chance and then maybe just submit it through writing maybe submitting uh submitting your questions to the email would be best and maybe most fair i do recognize it's 405. i think we can keep the webinar going until 4 15. so again for folks who can stay on please join us for another 10 minutes uh folks who need to jump we are recording this and a link to this archived video will be on our website within a day or so so so you can check that as well thank you for your answers thanks for asking so next person is patrick molly please share your question or comment oh maybe he's writing um so then we can move to maria mothra thank you um i just had a couple questions because some of this sounds like um it might be close to the way the chat program was with the application process so if an agency applies to administer or to to we're not we're helping we're right so if people apply on the 2-1-1 website and they choose an area the main agency is taking care of them first unless they need help reaching out to contact that person to get the information i'm not quite sure how it's evolving um difference and then i'll have it just as well but the applicant will no longer choose a district where they're going to be served because the statewide program is run by a statewide processor so the applicant simply gets into the system and is served there is an aspect of this however where if someone you know has started their application process online and not through a referral to the field partner but is in that process and it's very clear that they're just not going to get through it without getting referred then that referral would actually happen in a workflow that has not been totally worked through but between 211 our processing company and minnesota housing staff would make sure that you know essentially tenants who just can't get through it without assistance are referred out in a manner that's the right fit based on who we select for this rfp so if an agency applies um to help these people then you are actually serving that agency is actually helping serve the entire state not just a a geographical area of the state so i think maybe a good way to think about it would be this um if we think about the this fields of partners rfp first from that that view of marketing and outreach that's that's um that's a primary scope of work under this rfp and what you're telling us is hey there's a particular group that we're working with um that we have access to that we have great working relationships with that without us you aren't going to be able to reach these populations right and so so we need resources to be able to go out and do that um it's it's it's it think of your referrals coming from that group that you're marketing outreach to because you're saying hey people there's this program out there that you might be eligible for um either go online and apply yourself or if you need help contact us be you your organization so you're the one that's really generating um the referrals of of who's who you're going to work with when when people call into the the two on one system or go online themselves and then they find they need help we don't think that's going to be a lot of people um so relatively speaking so the referrals from that mean um infrastructure to selected grantees is going to be much smaller than who you're going to be serving because of your outreach activities okay thank you and then i just want to jump on to that for a second because once we have the network of field partners established it will be working with 2-1-1 if there will be referrals made from 2-1-1 back to a field partner it will be very specific and strategic and that will be worked out as soon as we have that network in place but that's that's one thing that 211 will be able to do in addition to just putting people into the system and doing some basic navigation themselves is is making referrals the next taste okay hey can you hear me i'm good okay so i was just wondering i know in the beginning and the start of the the champ we had some um let's see propane wasn't in an allowed expense and i threw a lot of the funding off because we weren't allowed to use propane later until december um is that going to be a loud expense this time is there going to kind of be a list of like utility water and so forth so we know what we can and can't do there will be a list available propane not because this isn't a homeowner program so we won't have that propane piece but but yes there will be a very thorough list of eligible expenses but again it's just helping folks get the documentation they need for those expenses uh when we need it okay um let's see and are we going to be taking verbal authorizations i knew we did that before through the chat program that we were taking verbals um or is this going to be a requirement that we do we get required signatures we'll have to confirm um the requirements on signatures still yeah so so what i can share is that um there again this as rachel laid up really well earlier in this meeting this is a treasury run it's a program where treasury has provided direction on what we can and can't do and so there are unfortunately our hands are more tied in this program than under the chat program so where we where we were able to say yes let's use self attestation or cell certification to do it um that's that's our approach to this program except when we're told we can't okay if that helps and then one more one more last question i know that um we were talking about the areas up north and um where you know people were able to pick a certain area i know you covered that this one issue that we ran up to up north i'm on the leech lake um indian reservation some of the roads that we do have named up here are in the ojibwe language and those are not found sometimes in addresses so it sometimes looks like um the people that we are assisting do not have a location um and we've had to use which we came up and tried you to use even our address here at leech lake housing to try and get him some assistance but that that's kind of something that we run into quite a bit up here it's not going to correlate with the state program thanks for that comment i think we're definitely building in alternative address options um you know in a case where somebody may have a po box we're looking into ways where we can get at the location um if there's not an address that doesn't get picked up by the regular system so thanks for that thank you okay next is ng hwang please submit yourself and share your question or comment hello can you hear me okay yep thank you just have a quick questions i know this one is a contract of services at our end do we need to open up for a solicitation process or we can just name our partners i would like to confirm that and i will put that in the faqs that's something you'll need to check the federal guidance on thanks for the question thank you and the next questions is about translations um at the budget it doesn't have a line item for translation so we're just wondering um is that um other populations being listed as more a higher priority compared with the limited english proficiency members so i think the question is that it's not on the budget right and i think it is an eligible expense or it would be eligible in your budget so we could add that as a line item and then could you repeat the second part of your question please we're just wondering because that's not being listed and also the population for the limited english proficiency members has not been listed in the service um group so we're wondering is that not in the priority list so so even though it's not listed in your budget or i'm sorry it's not listed as an example uh in the budget template that would be an eligible expense in your budget so you can go ahead and list that in there i'll also answer is it's the group for the limited english proficiency member is not listed in the service group when rachel presented african-american native americans lgbtq is listed with those groups are the priority groups no i think limited english proficiency populations would fall within that equity framework certainly thank you okay uh probably might be our last person who raised hands so far yes for waiting uh yeah lima maybe we can at least take care of the question from uh lima you are muted please share your question or comment you hear me yep we can hear you okay perfect my question is in terms of the documentation what tax filings are you um are you looking for um in nonprofit organizations usually i mean the first thing a content does is not working on profits for a long time the first thing i contend to do is file for extension so um and it's not april 15th yet but taxes usually for a lot of non-profits they don't get fired like in june and july therefore we wouldn't have 20 20 taxes uh nine nineties but i will be using a 2019 is that going to be a problem uh i don't think so uh if uh what we'd recommend at this point is submit the the most recent that you have and we'll go from there if that's you know if that causes um us to have a question about it we would probably reach out and ask for clarity on it so submit the most recent that you have thank you and so with that being our last question i just want to um thank everybody who joined us i i just looked up and we've got about 85 people who are attending on this webinar so that's awesome um i'm sure some were on and had to jump off so thanks for carving out time so you know and such a quick show turnaround time again we know that we're asking so much of you to consider being able to put together an application in a matter of one week and get it submitted um thank you i i hope you can understand that the reason why we're doing this is because we're also knowing people need to be served and people have been served for months and they need it so if we can look at this as a partnership and and seeing why we're doing it this way that may be helpful again please send any question that you have to the uh cra website i'm sorry email um have that in by noon tomorrow and we'll do our very best to answer every question that we get in a written format um and put that up on our website by uh you know end of the day tomorrow is our goal jessica yeah we also have a handful questions that we didn't go over today uh so we will add those answers uh in our faq as well so just want to share thank you so much thank you everyone bye now