Travis County Commissioners Court
May 19, 2009,
Travis County Housing Finance Corporation
>> good afternoon.
let's call to order the Travis County housing finance corporation.
item no.
1 is to consider and take appropriate action on request to approve home tenant based rental assistance contract no.
10001101 with the Texas department of housing and community affairs.
>> good afternoon, I'm harvey Davis, manager of the corporation.
>> good afternoon.
>> this is to approve the tenant based rental assistance contract with the state, cliff blunt, our attorney, has reviewed the contract and -- and said that it's appropriate for the board to approve this -- this of course has been on the agenda several times.
it's -- it's
>> [indiscernible] effort with health and human services department to implement the program, included in the backup is the authorization for approving setups and funds with the contract on the state's website and the people that are -- you would be authorizing to do these transactions are myself, mike gonzalez and mary maize and then on the documentation it states jane prince with the health and human services department would -- is the consultant for the corporation on this program.
environmental clearance would be done -- would be coordinated by christie moffat in the cdbg department.
so with that, any questions that I can answer?
>> questions?
>> move approval.
>> second.
>> discussion of the motion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
item no.
2.
consider and take appropriate action on request to approve a grant agreement with frameworks cdc.
>> good afternoon, my name is mike gonzalez, senior financial analyst for the corporation.
back on March 24th, 2009, the board unanimously approved a $50,000 grant to frameworks community development corporation.
today we are here to seek approval of the actual grant agreement between the housing corporation and frameworks and it's also to authorize board president to execute the agreement.
as you will recall, the funding is to provide foreclosure prevention counseling program for a 12-month period.
this would assist at least 100 individuals or families living in Travis County but outside of the city limits of Austin.
frameworks also stated that they would add an additional or hire an additional counselor to meet the extra additional capacity.
in your backup, you can see that the actual schedule for paying out the grant is based on performance.
initially, the -- they will be awarded 20,000 at full contract execution.
when they can document, 56 households, they will receive an additional 10,000.
when they hit the 84 assistant household threshold, they will get the additional 10.
finally when they do the final 112, they will get the last remaining $10,000 balance for the full 50,000.
be happy to answer any questions.
we do have a representative from frameworks here to answer any additional questions that you all may have.
>> I just have one question, I guess.
>> okay.
>> I guess directed at frameworks as far as their performance and the measurements that we need to look at for the allocation of the money that they are going to receive.
and as you do it, it's a breakdown of the number of homes that you are going to visit and things of that nature and you get staggered reward of -- award, rather, of the particular money that's available.
my concern is that what -- what just other than -- other than going to the home, what other type of measurement will you bring forth to really ensure that these folks were really assisted to the max of -- of your ability to serve them to, in the crisis situation as they are now, how do you do that?
Commissioner Davis, my name is
>> [indiscernible], with frameworks corporation.
>> how are you doing?
>> what we have provided to mr.
davis and mr.
gonzalez is an example of our reporting system that would show the details of our performance reports in terms of -- were the household is located, which type of loan it is, what the activity was that was involved in terms of counseling and then what is the ultimate disposition of that particular family's circumstance.
you know, did they achieve a
>> [indiscernible], refinancing, did they sell the home before foreclosure, that type of thing.
our counseling activity consists of, you know, families initially will come in or they will make contact by telephone or online.
we bring them in for an initial interview, at which we look at their mortgage delinquency, their budget, debt, other obligations, we look at their income, we help them to identify the problems, we lay out a crisis budget with the family that they agree to.
we will lay out to them the options that are available to potentially resolve the problem, you know, given who the particular lender might be or with the new making home available or affordable program.
what those options are.
and then with the authorization and participation of the family, we contact the lender right then because we've got established relationships with all of the major lenders to be able to contact them about a foreclosure to stop it right now for purposes of having enough time to negotiate, also to start the process of seeking a resolution.
then if the agreement is reached, then we will review that with the family to make sure that it is in fact the terms that they finds acceptable and feasible for the family and make sure that everything, all that, you know, I's are dotted, t's are crossed to make sure that that's all correct.
then what we will do is after that file is completed, we will put it on a ticker, we will check back with them three months, six months, 12 months out to make sure what's happened.
it's a very detailed process.
>> I'm aware basically of how detailed it probably would be.
but I just want to make sure that the performance on -- the persons that you serve that may be facing critical situations such as a foreclosure, that the report that you bring back is all the categories and cylinders that you mentioned as far as producing this report are there and present in the performance report.
i want to make sure because there's some scams out there that are really misleading some persons out there.
end result those persons are losing their homes I understand because of scams.
we don't want that to happen here in Travis County.
i just want to make sure that those cylinders are
>> [indiscernible] that the report come back to reflect the services that you rendered these persons that may be under foreclosure proceedings.
i wanted you to go through that to let the public understand exactly what's going on here.
>> we have a system that's called home counselor
>> [multiple voices] it's a fannie mae system.
in which every family that we have any contact with gets entered into that system.
as the activity occurs that's also entered, there's a log of the activity.
we keep both an online and a hard copy of all of the documents and we have provided to -- to mr.
davis and mr.
gonzalez a very detailed format of how we would do the reporting, track each and every family through the entire process and we would be very happy to provide that to you so that you could see what that report looks like.
but what -- you know, what we -- it's to be able to do a full level of housing counseling services for foreclosure intervention with each family.
>> thank you.
>> that's -- that's --
>> thank you for your time, comments.
>> you're welcome.
>> again, Commissioner Davis, we appreciate your question.
that's one thing that we actually met with, one of the criteria which we made pretty clear, when we reach an understanding.
we didn't want a citizen to call in and get a five minute phone call to count as the families.
i think that we agreed the baseline of service that we expect and just their process.
it's already pretty intense.
one thing we did make clear in the contract, in the agreement, we have the right to go out and review the file just to be sure that the level of services that we are expecting are actually being provided.
the corporation staff will have I guess approval rights of saying yes this counts towards your 1/12th based on the backup.
>> any or other questions?
>> second.
>> discussion?
all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote.
>> move adjourn.
>> thank you.
>> thank you very much.
>> all in favor?
that passes by unanimous vote, also.
now -- now let's call back to order the voting session of the Travis County Commissioners court.
we will take the two items involving the medical examiner's office, then we'll go to the compensation item and hopefully we'll have our compensation people down here by then.
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Last Modified:
Tuesday, May 19, 2009 2:00 PM