Announcement of Funding Awards for the Welfare-to-Work Section 8 Tenant-Based Assistance Program for Fiscal Year 1999

AGENCY:

Office of Public and Indian Housing, HUD.

ACTION:

Announcement of funding awards.

SUMMARY:

In accordance with Section 102(a)(4)(C) of the Department of Housing and Urban Development Reform Act of 1989, this announcement notifies the public of funding decisions made by the Department in a competition for funding under the FY 1999 Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for the Welfare-to-Work Section 8 Tenant-Based Assistance Program. This announcement contains the consolidated names and addresses of those award recipients under the Section 8 Welfare-to-Work Rental Voucher program.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:

For questions concerning the Welfare-to-Work Section 8 Voucher awards, contact the Office of Public and Indian Housing's Grant Management Center, Director, Michael E. Diggs, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Washington, D.C., telephone (202) 358-0221. For the hearing or speech impaired, these numbers may be accessed via TTY (text telephone) by calling the Federal Information Relay Service at 1 (800) 877-8339. (Other than the “800” TTY number, these telephone numbers are not toll-free.)

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:

This program provides tenant-based Section 8 rental assistance (vouchers) to help eligible families make the transition from welfare to work. Tenant-based Section 8 rental assistance is to be provided in connection with programs where housing agencies (HAs), Indian tribes and their tribally designated housing entities (TDHEs) have demonstrated that tenant-based rental assistance is critical to the success of eligible families in obtaining or retaining employment. No additional funding was provided under the NOFA for welfare-to-work services for families. Funding was only for Section 8 Welfare-to-Work rental voucher housing assistance and regular Section 8 administrative fees for administration of such housing assistance. The rental assistance provided must be coordinated with other welfare reform and welfare-to-work initiatives. Recipients awarded Welfare-to-Work vouchers may use some of their current pool of other Section 8 voucher funding to augment the welfare-to-work vouchers in order to enlarge the pool of vouchers available to those families qualifying for the recipient's approved welfare-to-work program.

The Fiscal Year 1999 awards announced in this Notice were selected for funding in a competition announced in a NOFA published in the Federal Register on January 28, 1999 (64 FR 4496). Applications were scored and selected for funding based on the selection criteria in that Notice and a national competition.

The amount appropriated in Fiscal Year 1999 to fund Welfare-to-Work Rental Vouchers was $283,000,000. Of that amount, $2.83 million was reserved for HUD to conduct a detailed evaluation of the effect of providing Section 8 Welfare-to-Work Rental Voucher assistance. Another $32,340,700 was awarded to 8 HAs for local self-sufficiency/welfare-to-work initiatives in 8 set-aside communities under a separate Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) published March 8, 1999. The remaining $247,829,300 was made available to fund 113 applications in rank order beginning with the highest scoring application under the national competition, and inclusive of 121 HAs and/or tribes/TDHEs funded, when accounting for multiple HAs in neighboring jurisdictions filing under one joint application. In accordance with Section 102(a)(4)(C) of the Department of Housing and Urban Development Reform Act of 1989 (103 Stat. 1987, 42 U.S.C. 3545), the Department is publishing the names, addresses, and amounts of the 121 awards made under the national competition, including joint applicants, and the 8 set-aside awards in Appendix A to this document.

APPENDIX A