At the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (THUD) hearing on March 10 (see article below), HUD Secretary Julián Castro discussed the schedule for distribution of the NHTF. In response to a question from Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI), the Secretary responded, “We expect the first allocations of the Housing Trust Fund will be made this summer. There’s a timeline here that will kick off basically in April where states will have to submit to us a state allocation plan and then we’ll have 45 days to respond to that. So we are confident that the timeline now for the states that are the most timely to submit their plan will be in the summer. And we look forward to that because, as you mentioned, the [NHTF] is important because it’s serving extremely low income individuals, [who] suffer from the biggest gap in affordability for housing that’s out there. So it’s a unique tool that we can use to fill that gap.”
NLIHC is working with state level advocates who will participate in the development of their state’s NHTF allocation plans. HUD has posted the names of 48 state agencies (including the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico) with the contact people who will administer the NHTF at https://www.hudexchange.info/programs/htf/grantees/.