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this conference will now be recorded good morning everyone we're just waiting for a few other folks to join us uh nancy are you pulling up the powerpoint and i'm gonna show her has not dialed in yet uh okay i'm gonna pull up i think she's using her computer audio but it doesn't recognize that she has a mic so um i can't nancy you might have to call in so i think what i'll do then is share my [Music] screen and then just go into slideshow mode all right thanks everyone for your patience so we are providing an overview of the covet 19 housing assistance program so that all of you have a chance to understand how the program started and what the components are this won't cover how to use the online system there is other training available for that through uh housing link and so um this is just more of an overview of the background of the program and eligibility guidelines and and some other helpful information that about our websites and how to get a hold of us and so i just wanted to make sure that all of you knew that this was not going to be a training for the housing link site itself however we can direct you to other resources for that if needed and both nancy urbanski and i are program managers for a number of housing assistance type programs at minnesota housing and our agency became the recipient of some funds that were passed down through the federal government to minnesota housing to administer so myself diane elias and nancy irvansky are the main context for this program so during the pandemic there were a number of housing priorities that were being focused on by our agency one was housing stability which included the executive order that halted evictions which is still in place there was also a need for short-term help for paying things like rent and mortgages and so we were advocating at the legislature for that and then we were of course looking to secure long-term resources for housing um for housing units themselves so that that was something that our agency was working on early on in the pandemic and then we eventually um requested a hundred thousand or sorry hundred a hundred million it went from actually a ten million dollar request ultimately to a hundred million in assistance in order to help those that were impacted by the pandemic and we currently have 52 administrators statewide that are operating this program and some of those administrators also have sub-grantees that are helping to administer the program so it's really a total of about 80 administrators in our system across the state our our timeline for that was that we did not receive funds for the legislature for state funds but when the federal funds became available we were able to receive an award for the 100 million dollars and we issued a request for proposal on july 14th then we were able to launch the program by august 24th and 52 administrators started to provide that coverage we were able to keep the application process open until december 7th with a really big push at the end by the governor um and we had uh quite a high volume of requests both at the beginning of the program but really at the end of the program a very high volume we were thinking that the program would have to sunset by the 30th because that was the original deadline however it was extended that was good news for us because it we had all of these households that had applied but we weren't sure we were going to have the speed necessary to be able to process them all by the end of the year and so we did provide some contract extensions which allowed us to continue processing into january and early february now the karazhak extension actually goes beyond that point but the february 15th deadline for payments is what we've created because we think that with that timing we'll be able to process all of the applications so the main goal of the program is really to help folks maintain their housing and it's it's more to prevent a vision now even though eviction there's a moratorium on that household still need to pay their rent because we don't want to get to a point where the eviction moratorium is lifted and then households are automatically evicted because they owe back rent so really this is to sort of make everyone whole so that they continue in their housing and when the eviction moratorium is lifted hopefully they will have their rent paid and be able to stay in their housing the program only pays for past two bills that are from march 1st to december 30th um of the the 2020 year and when i say december 30th that was the end date but in reality we don't have the ability to process any past due bills after december 7th because that's when that application process ended so any past two bills that have a due date after december 7th really can't be processed by our program so i'll kind of do a broad summary of the highlights of the program when we set this up it was an incredibly incredibly fast timeline we attempted to reach out to some grassroots organizations and have conversations with them about the design of the program we received some really great feedback on the best ways to reach people we did translate the application into three languages the system was built with the application only being available in english but the paper applications had three languages you know obviously with more time we wish we could have done um more than that but that's you know kind of the speed we were going at the time um we also wanted to make sure to address equity so rather than using it you know sort of an existing administrator model we really put out a broad rfp and we selected agencies um that we had not worked with before and and especially those that could reach some of the more disparately impacted populations in our state and so we were able to secure contracts with a number of culturally specific organizations as well as tribal nations we have no cap on the amount of assistance and that was very intentional because we didn't want to be in a situation where um households would have multiple months of rent potentially especially since our program was getting off the ground in august and the pandemic had been going on since march with a lot of people affected by illness and unemployment and so we really wanted to make sure that that there was no cap so that we could um pay all the months of assistance that would be needed and then we knew that we would have a high volume because other states and jurisdictions had already started some of these cares act programs and what we had been hearing was that they were really overwhelmed by requests for assistance oh sorry i might need um folks to just mute their microphone um because i think i can still hear somebody online um so just a reminder to make your microphone and then we knew that that that that sort of central intake process to take phone calls um and manage a high volume of calls would be really important um and then we also wanted to have the application available online because at this point everybody went to working and living remotely from from access to services was really challenging and so we wanted to be able to have the ability to try to apply using your phone and using computer and then we also wanted to try to connect with any of the local administrators that were also utilizing these funds and that was a really big challenge because we had multiple programs running in communities some of the state funds also went to local communities who then chose to use them for homeless prevention assistance and so we had a lot of programs across the state that were doing kind of the same type of program and trying to manage the duplication so that you know if households had applied to both that we weren't paying the same bill twice and really trying to set up some way of being able to see that in our system because we didn't have a system that interacted with these other programs it was a challenge and i know some of you are facing that especially now as other administrators are paying bills in other communities um you might be notified by the landlord or utility company that that bill has already been paid and you'll get a check back and have to then re-issue that out maybe to another assistance request so really appreciate you know your patience with the process simply because we built it so quickly we just weren't able to do the planning that we would have loved to be able to do for this type of large program all right and sorry my sometimes my computer advancing slides is a little slow there we go uh so i will turn it over to nancy now to just go through some of the eligibility for the program good morning everybody i will just go over the eligibility criteria for this program so for households to qualify they must be a minnesota resident and their household income must be at or below 300 percent of federal poverty guidelines and you'll see on this slide that in parentheses we say a priority at 200 percent fpg and the reason we have that in is we we anticipated if we got to a point that we knew that we would not have enough funds available compared to the amount of application requests that were in the system at that point our intention would have been then to target those households at 200 or lower because we we do have we anticipate having enough funds available while we will be fully subscribed we have not had a need to further prioritize but i can say that the majority of our households served have been at or below 200 of spg so we're really glad to see that despite the fact that we needed to ramp up this program very quickly we are really happy to see that we are it appears to be that we're serving those with the highest need in the state and then those households must also have a housing related payment such as rent or mortgage homeowner association dues or utilities or another housing related expense that is that is past due dated march 1st or later and because our program application deadline was december 7th we can no longer accept any past due bills that are dated past december 7th so any any past two bills december 7th i'm sorry march 1st through december 7th are eligible but anything after the 7th is not and then they must demonstrate and in this case all they have to do is check the box on the application i'm just certifying that their in their situation is impacted because of coded and we're not asking or requiring that you conduct any further due diligence in inquiry to the household you know why it why is it culprit related show us further evidence you don't need to do that um the only the only exception we make is if um something about that application just doesn't feel right to you um and you have you have other questions not just specific to it being called related so so especially in the with the lens of equity we are just really being careful not to make a judgment call on whether somebody's been been impacted their strip cell certification is enough sorry about that i'm not sure what happened i lost my whole service here nancy do you have the ability to pull up the powerpoint i i have it but i don't have control diane oh okay nancy i'll go ahead and make you a presenter all right thank you yep you can share your screen now okay oops not okay pardon me for a moment i need to pull up the presentation i'm so sorry nancy and i always joke around about the fact that you specifically glitches and at one point i think um we i think patty nancy and i ran from one conference room all the way down to another in about two seconds to be able to restart a conference i remember that what a mess that was that was funny okay let's see okay thank you for bearing with us folks um we were very intentional in wanting to make this application process as low barrier as possible and the the one thing that we were not able to work around was the criteria requirements from the u.s department of treasury so most of the elements on our application are on are provided and required because of that requirement from them um so for households to apply i guess i guess we're i can just kind of scan this because we no longer are in the application process but for households to apply they needed a um either an identification number or if they didn't have an id they could just check indicating that that was the case and they needed to provide their income for the 30 days prior to the application being submitted as the program continued we did make a modification to that and we were more lenient in being able to allow households to self-certify their income so while they're uploading their income is desired if they don't have the means to do that or they don't have that on hand they can simply submit documentation to you whether it's your own form or whether it's them just writing a note indicating what their household income is and then they do need to provide evidence of the past due bill and generally that's either a late mortgage statement from i'm sorry a late mortgage statement or a late rent statement or a pass-through utility bill nancy can you put your slides in uh slide your mode oh gosh yeah increase it a little bit bigger so that people can see it a little bit it's really small yes thank you let's see oops oh i'm sorry guys so if you go in the lower right hand corner um yep one right there two over two over this one one two right there okay thank you all right thank you much better sorry about that everybody all right thank you and then this is um these are a list of the household expenses that are eligible um and and the the top three that we are seeing is um by far rental payments are the majority at about 69 i'm sorry yes rent and then the second is utilities at about 17 to 19 and then the third most requested item is mortgage assistance and there there is no cap on the amount of assistance that a household can request we're seeing that the average the average payment is per household is about 2400 but we have seen some requests as high as 15 or even 20 000 although that's more the exception than the rule and in this program households were eligible to reapply so if they applied in in april and then in july they had another past due expense they could submit another reapplication and when you're in the housing link system process in those applications you're able to to tell you know if they've reapplied all right diane are you staying with us i am going to pass it back to you absolutely we'll talk a little bit about how the process actually works um or did work i should say because we did end that that application process on the seventh as i mentioned but just so you know how households came into the system and maybe where the pain points are now households could dial 2-1-1 they could text or they could visit the housing assistance application website i think one of the most challenging parts about the program was trying to figure out how to get communication out there and not make it so large uh that that we were completely overwhelmed but also trying to get to the populations that were the ones most impacted so we did a number of things on the communication side one was of course the governor's announcement that was published in the paper we um then received a lot of emails and phone requests from households which we kept in sort of e-news list that we had and then we were able to send out a little e-news about the program once at launch so that they could get the information and be able to apply we also had some small radio stations in the rural areas advertising the program we did some work with i believe the workforce centers to be able to issue out information to people who are receiving unemployment and then just a number of other ways that we were able to advertise we also put together communication materials on the front end in order to provide some information about the assistance and we tried to translate some of those as well so just making sure that you know we had the materials in place so people could post it on their websites that way people seeking help through administrators or even counties anyone that that could provide that information would have that available and then at the very end of the program the governor also made another announcement during his regular press conferences that he is holding and of course then additional ews articles were generated as a result um and then with the household being able to figure out how to apply um the the one thing then that they did was sort of a pre-screening to see if they were eligible and that's the questions that nancy mentioned on one of the prior slides about being a minnesota resident and whether you have a coveted related situation and um you know what your income is and as long as you were eligible you could move on to fill out a full application um if you weren't eligible then the the nice part about having two one one on the front end was that you could be provided some additional resources that might be able to meet whatever the need was that you were calling about so for those that were eligible then you were able to submit a full application and we contracted with housing link to build the software for this program it's very similar to what they use for section 8 programs that some of the housing assistance agencies like an hra or pha might use to help manage the waiting list and the nice part about that system is that it has a front end where the customer can enter information and then there's a back end where the administrator can go in and see the customer information and there's also a way to update the status of the application so that the customer can log back in and see where they are in their statuses and so you know once the application was completed it would send an email back to the household to say your application's been complete and then once it was being processed or there was a payment the application status would change so that the household could see it i think ideally this was you know initially a great idea how it worked in practice probably was a mixed bag on how households felt about it first of all if you couldn't get online if you didn't have the capacity to have internet that was going to be a real challenge and you were going to have to work with a local administrator to complete that application if there was a language barrier that would also be an issue because the system is in english and so you know we had a number of folks that needed that additional assistance for the language piece i think also just uh the stress right so remembering where you applied and what your login information is so that you could get back into the system going in and seeing that you've put in an application and a few weeks have gone by and you might not have heard back yet from an administrator could also be frustrating maybe you're thinking gosh it looks like i can still get in but my status hasn't changed so maybe my application didn't get in there so a lot of questions about from customers on that and and i think some of it is just simply due to just the high volume of applications that it's taking several weeks to process through the application so households are waiting and another month might go by initially we were able to accommodate some of the additional amounts of assistance so like if there were households that had an application sitting in the system and four weeks had gone by and they now owed another amount of rent we could pay that but now because we're at the end of the program we really can't pay beyond what people have requested um even if another month has gone by since their application was submitted because we're fully subscribed at this point so all of our money is sort of assigned to these households that are in the system and we can't do a lot on the wiggle room about how much the bills are that said you know as we get closer to the end we'll be able to see the actual financial picture even better and it may be that we would be able to pay additional bills for these households if we aren't able to pay what they're now or what they're asking for in addition but we also hate to make households wait because if we don't have enough funding at the end then we really need to get them to a different program um and or a different you know different resource in order to pay that bill so i would strongly encourage you for any households you're working with now if they have additional rent or they have additional bills that have not been submitted as of their application time that we really need to be looking for other resources for that um so that so that they don't have to wait and and find out that there really isn't money available and some of those resources for additional you know kind of additional resources beyond this program can be accessed through two on one so households could be referred back for resources um the family homeless prevention and assistance program is an example resource of what might be able to cover um any additional bills that fall under this category of prevention which would be rent mortgage or utilities so i would definitely encourage you to connect those folks with that program and then of course there's also energy assistance they are currently saying that they have enough money to take additional applications for energy assistance they they have received some additional support from the federal government with their energy assistance program so um that's also known as l-i-h-e-a-p or laihi lihi but a lot of people have an acronym for that and so please definitely with utility bills as well reach out and have those households connect because that can be an ongoing assistance that they can receive so if um the household was able to complete an application they would do that if they weren't able to they would then um have an administrator help them and then ultimately either the administrator would be helping the client put the application in the system or looking at applications that have been submitted in the system by households themselves and that's where the housing link system comes in and as i mentioned before there are training materials for that on housing links website all right next slide so speaking of websites um we have a general website that talks about covert 19 related communications and resources and you can find that in the first bullet we also have a website specifically for individuals and households and that is still up and running even though the program is no longer open to receiving applications we do have a place where households can go to sign up and receive information about any future resources and so i think that's going to be really important now that they have approved another 25 billion and at least the rental assistance but also there may be other programs and so um in the future if something happens with regard to help with mortgages again um you know hopefully those households can stay in the loop by signing up to that that sort of uh e-news list that i mentioned before and that's the website that would provide them the link on where they can do that and then the kovit 19 housing assistance program for administrators is the website that you all would be accessing on a regular basis it has the program guide it also has training materials and and this webinar that's being recorded today as well as others and then it has frequently asked questions it also has some great resources such as um a list of servicers i think is oh no not the list of servicers that we have to send you sorry separately but there's a list of um how to identify which mortgages fall under the cares act for example and some really helpful communication around that um and then we do have just so you know we do have a list of um servicers mortgage servicers and if you're working on mortgage loans and you're having attention to the bank or getting hold of a mortgage company we may have a contact for you and so definitely um reach out to us and we can public because the individual that works for one of those institutions who compiled all that information promised he wouldn't do that but we can provide it to our administrators directly so all right next slide so this is um just a little bit out of date so you'll see that that's as of january uh six we actually have i think over 24 000 approved or paid now and more than 55 million approved in the system and and as you're thinking about what's left people will automatically calculate 45 million left to reach the 100 million but just remember that up to 15 percent was available for administrative costs and also to pay for the housing lincoln 211 system underneath that 15 percent cap and so some of the funding that that's already been spent is actually on administrative costs as nancy mentioned rental assistance is the bulk of the assistance that we're providing along with utility systems and then mortgage assistance and mortgage assistance isn't as high because of the fact that we don't duplicate what's happening in the cares act and so households that fall under federally backed mortgages are able to request forbearance and so then we wouldn't be paying for their expenses however there are a few exceptions to that one is if the household has access forbearance but it was moving forward so let's say they had a march in april payment due and they made a request for forbearance in may and the bank agreed that going forward from may to the next six months they would put that in forbearance which allows them to mostly defer the loan to the end of their payment period which might be years from now which is great news for them that works but then the march and april payment might still be due we do have the ability to pay the march and april payment in that circumstance another circumstance where we might be able to help a household that is covered under the cares act has a federally backed mortgage is if the type of loan that they have won't cover the tax and insurance portion so for mortgages typically there's you know four parts of a mortgage payment principle which is you know kind of the regular balance of the loan interest payment of course that the bank receives for that loan and then taxes and insurance are often put into like escrow and the bank pays on the homeowner's behalf sometimes the forbearance option does not cover that tax and insurance portion of the payment and those are still due so if you end up with a loan in that circumstance you might be able to pay the tax and insurance portion and then for anything that falls under other and nancy probably mentioned this as well but just making sure that if if it's not in a category that is listed in the program guide um to just let us know what it is there are other housing related expenses but we'd like to know and we get questions on that too from legislators what's in the other category which you know makes sense because we want to be good stewards of the taxpayer dollar but just let us know if there's an unusual cost that's related to the assistance request but we'll you know we can check to see if it will satisfy the the sort of housing-related requirement and then be able to provide approval to you for that in this case the reason why our other category is so high is not because we have a lot of other categories it's actually because initially in the system we weren't able to have multiple bills the way that we thought we could and so a lot of utilities are listed in there we fixed that ultimately but that's why you see that category being as high as it is next slide so nancy do you want to cover some common questions yes i certainly can um we thought we'd give you an overview of the common questions that we continue to hear through the program and also because we have made some modifications um during this grant period and so because of that we just wanted to highlight some of these specifically and then of course when when we're through with this presentation we invite you to ask any other questions that you may have so w-9s are required for entities such as the landlord mortgage companies and they are now no longer required for utility companies and so you you do not need to obtain a w-9 for a utility company and we while you're uploading most of your household documents into housing link we do ask that you do not upload the w-9 especially for the landlord because oftentimes the landlords without with only just one or two properties utilize their put their social security number on that w-9 and because the household has access to everything that's uploaded in the file and that's confidential we do ask that you keep that at your agency and then we do uh require that that you obtain verification from the landlord and this is in addition to the past due rent letter that households will often submit and so on that verification we want them to indicate the amount that is past due the period of time for which that is past due and then also have them check that they have not received funds from any other resource for this assistance and if you have um questions about the specific elements that we're looking for we do also have that outlined in our program guide and diane did cover the the changes in our mortgage forbearance uh what what we now consider eligible expenses and again just very briefly if there's a period of time that the household is not eligible for forbearance so the example that she used i'll just reiterate because it is it can be confusing if a household requests forbearance in may and they're granted that forbearance that forbearance is granted from the date of the request going forward and so any past due march or april would be eligible or could be eligible because that's not covered under forbearance and then again taxes and insurance if not covered by forbearance and if they are past you are also eligible after this training we will send you out a housing link list of liaisons each agency has their own a fine liaison and so if you have any technical questions about the housing link system the first place we recommend that you go because you'll get the quickest answer is to your housing link liaison while it's not on this list i wanted to mention something about 10.99 you may be in be sending 1099s to the entities with whom you're paying funds especially landlords because that is for them that's considered income when you're making that payment on their behalf but we want to also clarify that you can follow your own agency policy about sending out 10.99 we are not requiring that you do that because we are not in a position nor qualified to give you tax advice so you can just consult with your fiscal department and to determine if if your agency should be sending out 1099 and then i want to just highlight one more time that we do allow self-certification of income especially now that you're going into housing link and some of these applications might be you know several weeks old um if they have an uploaded income and it's it's easier and it's going to help expedite the application processing you can obtain a household certification of their income as diane touched on until recently households could add on to their request so for example if they submitted a utility request a month ago and you are just getting to the point that you're processing that utility request and they now have additional funds passed due it had been eligible but because we do expect to fully utilize our funds and we are fully subscribed at this time we are not allowing that so you um we are asking that you only pay the amount that is passed due at the time that they submit their application for any applications that are denied we do provide the guidance in our program guide and require that you send them a denial letter and in that letter there is an appeal policy that you'll need to outline and that language again is in our program guide essentially households have 10 days to appeal the denial from the date that you send that communication and so as you are winding down the operation of your program you'll need to you know keep that 10-day window in mind so if your last day of processing applications is february 2nd and you send out your denial letters you'll have until the 12th you know where you could be receiving appeals and then that will give you a few days to process those appeals if you over if you make overturn the denial then you will have some time to send out that payment for any applications that have been withdrawn you do not need to send a denial letter to that household and the the application processing deadline we have been talking about this on our phone alls and our guidance is this so your current contracts are allowing you to make the final payment um you know up until february 15th however again you know backing up you want to back up that uh 10-day appeal window and so for those of you that are processing and anticipate being completed by january 31st or shortly thereafter we want you to continue to process as efficiently as possible so that you can you can wrap that up there are a few grant administrators that we know will not be able to completed by that timeline and we're working with all of you individually if you're impacted by that to to assist you and determine what that program end date would be for you but ultimately our goal is to um close this program have have the last payments issued by february 15th and then your contracts expire on i think through march 15 and that gives you time to close out your brand we do have provider calls this is an outdated slide we started out in the program having calls monday wednesday and friday and now we have provider calls every monday and wednesday from three to four o'clock p.m and if you are not registered for that we do really invite you to participate in that phone call and if you go to our grant administrator webpage which was highlighted a few slides ago about halfway down that page there's a section called provider webinars and that will give you a link to register for those webinars i think we it's been really useful for folks that are on that call because there's just a lot of questions that come up and even though this is we're into the fifth month of this program i think we still get a new question every day there's just so many complications to this program and so it's really helpful for um people to hear each other and and also at times grant administrators will share what they're doing and offer tips to other grants administrators so there's some problem stopping that goes a lot that occurs with grant administrators as well so we invite you to sign up for those webinars we will not be having one this coming monday because it is martin luther king day fantastic thanks nancy so now we'll open it up for questions you're welcome to unmute your mic and ask any questions that you have hi this is sherry meyer and quick question so initially we were told that if an application is in verification or submitted status that we couldn't shown and show it as withdrawn but when we run across someone and they say oh i've already paid my past due balance i no longer need assistance can we still put that in withdrawn versus denied because it feels like it gives you different analytical results if we move it to deny yeah yeah i think you could definitely do that um the one thing you would want to do is just make sure that you you send i know that nancy said they don't need a denial letter if they're withdrawn um but in this circumstance because you're withdrawing them as the administrator just send them a note or a letter or email it doesn't have to be anything formal but just noting you know due to the fact that you've paid this bill we're withdrawing your application and that just gives you the documentation um in case the household comes back you'll have that that documented as well great and then my other question is typically we can deny if there's three attempts a week apart and no response and obviously now we're sitting at less than i mean well we're getting close to three weeks is there a point when we're going to be able to you know if there's no response from them is that gonna yeah yeah so uh there were a couple of emails that have been sent out by the system itself through housing link so that's a good question i'll find out um if we're we're at that point of only i think we only had one contact left um so i think if you make one contact at this point it's probably enough because the system itself had been generating emails out to the households to make sure that you know their documentation was in and that they were staying in touch with administrators and i'll double check that but but i think at this point that's all we can do you're correct thank you thanks for the question any other questions hey diane this is tonya west happner i was just wondering um i hadn't been involved in the day-to-day stuff for this but i'm just wondering if you were doing this training um in anticipation of the additional funds that are coming are you guys planning to to continue basically the same program or any thoughts on that i guess i'm curious hi tanya good to hear your voice uh so we we are um anticipating obviously uh potentially managing the emergency rental assistance funds and we are planning for that but we do not see it as a continuation of the existing program at the end i think that um there's so many differences in the new the new rental assistance program especially because it doesn't have mortgages it has different income limits there's some different expectations um from u.s treasury and we're sort of waiting for that final guidance too to come out and so we we don't anticipate that it will necessarily be a continuation of this program for the planning so far what we are doing is meeting with the other jurisdictions that that will potentially receive funds which are the counties in the metro area there are five of those and then the two cities minneapolis and st paul and then we're also connecting with tribal nations staff at the tribal nations particularly the housing directors just to figure out what everyone is doing and then talking about the potential of coordinating together but beyond that we don't have any intention to continue this specific program so that's a good question okay thank you i was just curious that's you know why you're kind of doing a training thing and i hadn't sat in on any of them before so thank you for that tanya that sorry diane i'll just add to that that the reason that we're we're having this training and we also had one last week is that some grant administrators have had recent hires um whether it's temporary or or other in-house staff that are being shifted over to assist them in processing applications and because we haven't had a new this training for several months we wanted to make sure that that those individuals had access to it yeah okay great i did like i said i just didn't know if it was potentially because you're planning to just sort of roll this same kind of program into that with the new money and stuff too so yeah yeah i mean it'll definitely be a new program what it actually looks like i mean it could look similar to this program for coordinating on the front end or for using a specific software for it but we just haven't made that determination we you know we have a lot to consider uh we know that the payment processing um was a challenge uh with this high volume of applications um in particular if there were smaller requests so we're just really trying to figure out what the best option is for the type of sort of software that we would use um you know continuing to try to figure out how to host an online application and then looking at whether we do any kind of coordinated door like we did with two on one i think it doesn't mean that any of this wasn't successful and we might still utilize some of the tools from this program so i wouldn't necessarily rule that out but we just have to really sort of take a breath and go back and figure out kind of what worked what was a challenge you know really listen to our stakeholder groups um on on what their their clients were experiencing as well to make sure that we we can do the best that we can for this new program and then again we're moving sort of at that work speed um with a different set of rules and having to have 65 of the funds that we do receive expended by september i mean this is really just as fast a timeline yeah just as fast of a timeline as the prior programs in my mind with you know just double the money but the same same type of timeline yeah it's definitely a challenge and i think that's that's where my head was at is because you know potentially it's going to be the same sort of situation where we have multiple agencies getting entities getting funding and then trying to figure out a way to coordinate all that so that people don't have to go to six different places and try to get help so yeah exactly and so for for the um metro counties that are eligible in the two cities um there was a coordination call with our agency already i think they're planning another one and so that that could be really helpful if people are talking together and figuring out how they want to manage that absolutely thank you thanks tanya any other questions we have a quieter group this time nancy um so i i know nancy mentioned the part about self-verification of income as one of the changes that we made in the program um to sort of speed up the processing and also honor the fact that folks had already put maybe some income information in the system or couldn't get access to their documentation due to various reasons because you know businesses were were actually going out of business and there was also some you know in the metro area particularly uh because of the protests people were just not able to reach employers um so we really wanted to make sure that households were not burdened by additional additional requirements and i think uh another piece that changed in the system um at some point was that we we used to require hard signatures and then we changed the system to be able to allow the the customer to put a signature in so that changed along the way as well so in older applications you might see that we used hard signatures but we have been able to figure out a process to do that online now so another i'll just say a couple of other helpful hints i mentioned the part about the mortgage servicer list so let us know if you do run into a situation where you're not able to get a hold of a mortgage company and we can try to help you with a contact um we also have contacts with utility companies if you do need to talk to them hopefully you can work on your end to do the math for that on your own um and be able to just you know sort of reasonably come up with a monthly amount based on the bill that you have we're we're not expecting you to um you know be incredibly detailed uh with the utility bill you know if it's nine hundred dollars and nine months have passed and one falls outside of the time frame of march first then you'd pay 800 um so just trying to speed up the processing by providing some flexibility on how that's calculated but we do have the ability sometimes to access the portal in the utility company with administrators being able to sign up and be able to just go right into a utility company portal we also have some contacts for utility companies if you run into a really unusual circumstance so just let us know if you need any help with that any other questions all right hopefully you guys have an extra four minutes today before any other meetings and things that you have to do thanks again for joining us and if you do have questions um nancy will be emailing out the covetop email that you can always contact us we have several staff monitoring that you should get a response really quickly and otherwise we will hopefully see you on the webinars next wednesday will be the next one thanks bye you