OSTA: Empowering Park & Marina Residents

HAF is on the Way! (Homeowners Assistance Fund)

• Bill Bateman

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This is something you should see and share with your neighbors. Join me as I talk with Ryan Vanden Brink from the Homeowner Assistance Fund. Known as HAF, they can provide lot rent assistance to homeowners who own their manufactured homes. They must be winding the program down and are only accepting new applications submitted by (free) housing counselors for homeowners getting close to foreclosure or lot rent eviction. With that limited scope in mind, if this is you, they invite you to reach out.

Here are links to learn more about the program, and the Housing Counselor in your County.
Please share this with anyone you know in this situation. Applicants can be accepted, as of this date, through October. Please check the website for the latest updates.

Oregonhomeownerassistance.org
A list of Housing Counselors by County to Get Started

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Email: bbateman@oregontenants.com

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Bill Bateman:

Well, good morning, and I'm pleased to have a special guest with me this morning. He's from the Oregon Housing and Community Services Department, mr Ryan Vanderbink, and he is with the Home Ownership Division and he's got some very exciting news. The clock is running on this, but it's really good information. If you are in a pinch, ryan, good morning and thank you for being here.

Ruan Vanderbink:

Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Bill Bateman:

Well, I'm excited. I think you are best qualified to just kind of explain this, because this is your baby and it involves some good things for people in manufactured homes who may be looking at eviction for rent or rent eviction notices. So take it away, ryan.

Ruan Vanderbink:

Yes, so I am the manager of the Homeowner Assistance Fund program, or HAF as I'm going to call it today, and we are hoping to help more folks out as we wind the program down, especially those that are most at risk of, say, manufactured home or floating home, eviction or foreclosure. A little background about the HALF program. It is a federal pandemic emergency response program enacted by the American Rescue Plan Act. It's administered at the federal level by the US Treasury. All 50 state governments, many US territories and many tribes operate their own HALF program with the funds. With the funds, the overall goal is to prevent foreclosures and maintain homeownership. For homeowners who were financially impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, that means a loss of income or an increase in housing expenses that is directly related to the pandemic. In Oregon we can help homeowners get caught up on housing costs like mortgages, property taxes, HOA's, lot rent or mortgage fees, and for some low-income families we will also make a few ongoing payments to help boost housing stability for them.

Bill Bateman:

That's outstanding. Now I understand the clock is ticking on this due to the program winding down, but you're still taking applications, Am I correct?

Ruan Vanderbink:

Yes, we are. We were allocated about $90 million in the beginning. We have a little under $8 million left, so our average award is about $26,500. And so we estimate we can take about 300 new applications. And so while I say the average is $26,500, we can actually help homeowners by providing up to $50,000 to help them reinstate their housing accounts. That's wonderful. We can put a lot of money at this.

Bill Bateman:

That's great and, to be specific, this is only for homeowners getting close to foreclosure or lot rent eviction, and it has to come through a housing counselor. How does that work?

Ruan Vanderbink:

Yes, so for homeowners who are in foreclosure whether it's judicial, non-judicial or county tax foreclosure, or homeowners who are facing a park or marina eviction proceeding or having a 10-day notice, they will visit one of our local intake partners and you can find our intake partner list linked to our website at OregonHomeOwnerAssistanceorg. They have their own intake process, so please don't delay. If you're in one of these situations, Call up one of our intake partners in your area or the closest one, Meet with them. They have the ability to provide free foreclosure avoidance counseling, evaluate you for our eligibility criteria and, if you fit the eligibility criteria, they can help you prepare and submit the half application and walk you through the process as it goes through underwriting.

Bill Bateman:

This sounds really good. I'll and this is statewide. Anybody within Oregon can qualify for this.

Ruan Vanderbink:

Yes.

Bill Bateman:

What is the timeline, how long do we have until this thing closes down, and what happens to the money at the end?

Ruan Vanderbink:

We are planning to make our final payments in February of next year. We will most likely stop taking new applications sometime in October this year, based on the timeline of reviewing the applications, underwriting the information on our end, meeting our federal and state requirements, communicating with servicers parks, marinas, counties and coordinating everything and the information, coordinating, signing half loan documents which secures our assistance to the property and then we fund the application. So it does take some time to go through our process, which is why we're tentatively looking at October for final applications and, unfortunately, if there is money left over at the end, it goes back to the federal government.

Bill Bateman:

So we don't want to waste it. We'd like to see as many people as possible get helped out. I know it takes time for this to happen. Does applying stop the clock? Does it stop the eviction or the processes? Will this keep the person from being evicted while their application is being processed?

Ruan Vanderbink:

That is entirely dependent on the person that is running the process. Hap is a voluntary program, so the servicer, the park owner, the marina owner has to agree to participate in our program and when they do, they also have to work with us and in many cases we are successful in postponing or pausing the process that is going on. We can postpone foreclosure dates if we are able to work with the foreclosing party. If somebody's in eviction, we can also ask their attorney to pause the eviction process while we evaluate and fund an application. Some are willing to work with us, some are not. It's entirely dependent on who is running the process.

Bill Bateman:

Would seem better to get paid than have an empty home. But you can never understand totally what's going on in a person's mind.

Ruan Vanderbink:

I guess that's how I feel too. Okay, we do our best to pause or postpone things while we're evaluating an application.

Bill Bateman:

Well, I'm going to include the links, and the link is to OregonHomeownersAssistanceorg if they need to reach out and get more information on this program.

Ruan Vanderbink:

That'd be great.

Bill Bateman:

Are phone calls appropriate, or does that just delay the process?

Ruan Vanderbink:

Yes, we can take phone calls, but at this point we will refer people to the intake partners, so you can also call us and locate your closest intake partner too.

Bill Bateman:

All right, this sounds very good. So the clock is running. If you are a person in a manufactured home facing eviction or foreclosure for lot rent or property taxes, here is an opportunity to get some help. The email address and the web address is going to be in the podcast connect, and this is a great program, ryan. Is there anything else we should be talking about before I let you go? I know you're a busy person.

Ruan Vanderbink:

I have three things that might be relevant to your listeners. I mentioned that our assistance is secured to the property in the form of a loan, and that loan is a no interest, no payment loan that is forgiven after five years if they still maintain and own the home as their primary residence, and own the home as their primary residence If they sell. They have to repay all or a portion, based on a forgiveness schedule, and the way this works for manufactured housing is if you own the land, we will prepare a mortgage, and that mortgage is recorded in the county title records. If you own the structure but you're in a park and you don't own the land, or you're a floating home in a marina, we take a security interest in the structure with the appropriate state agency. These loans are non-recourse, which means our interest is in the property, and so in most cases, if somebody is later foreclosed like they're still in a bad situation, or if they have to walk away, we're not going to enforce the loan against somebody individually, and I think that's an important point.

Bill Bateman:

That really is yes.

Ruan Vanderbink:

Another thing that we have done that's pretty innovative. That, I think, is we ran into a problem with a lot of manufactured homeowners in a park where they did not transfer or register their ownership with the Department of Consumer and Business Services manufactured home database of ownership. That's a requirement for our program, and so we ran into this government catch-22 because to register you have to be current on your county taxes and most people applying for our program are not. So we've developed a workaround process so that we can help people who would otherwise be eligible for our program. We will work with their application, approve their application, conditionally we will pay the county personal property taxes. The person then registers their ownership with DCBS and the registration that we need, and when they are the owner we will take our security interest and then we will pay any lot rent or mortgage that is due. So we'll still be able to work with people, and this usually involves close collaboration with those housing counselors I talked about or an attorney.

Bill Bateman:

That is innovative as the dickens. That is very good. Those Catch-22s can really hamstring a process, so good work there. Anything else that comes to mind?

Ruan Vanderbink:

Yes, one last thing I mentioned the housing counselors that we're working with. The HAF program is also sponsoring free or low-cost legal representation for homeowners who are facing foreclosure, lot rent eviction or that may have title issues or just questions about what their rights are, and so listeners can learn more about this opportunity, which we call the Oregon Homeowner Legal Assistance Project, by reviewing the resources webpage, the last tab on our website at oregonhomeownerassistanceorg. It's a really great opportunity that will be around as long as HAP is operating, so not that much longer, but for anybody that needs that legal assistance, there's an opportunity for it, free or low cost.

Bill Bateman:

That's exceptional, because it's always good to consult with an attorney when you're getting to the point of going to court. You don't want to try and do this yourself. At least that's my opinion. Yes, all right, ryan, I think we've covered it all. Thank you very much for being here today, taking time out of your busy schedule, and thank you and the folks at Oregon Housing and Community Services Department. It sounds like you're doing some great work there, and thank you very much.

Ruan Vanderbink:

Yeah, thank you for having me. We're doing our best to help as many people as we can.

Bill Bateman:

Outstanding. Have a good day.

Ruan Vanderbink:

Thank you.

Bill Bateman:

This program was produced by Retired Guy Productions.

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