The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced the asset-building cohort of the expansion of its Moving to Work (MTW) Demonstration Program.
Through this cohort, HUD said it will evaluate asset-building activities that encourage the creation and growth of savings accounts and/or aim to build credit, through rent reporting, for assisted households.
HUD said it will first call a community of practice of the selected agencies to discuss and develop these policies for implementation and evaluation.
“I am so excited to announce our newest cohort of [public housing agencies (PHAs)] in the Moving to Work Demonstration program,” HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge said in a release. “This cohort will create environments for low-income renters to better their credit scores, access bank accounts and save for the future. And, most importantly, this cohort will have the flexibility to develop solutions that meet the needs of their unique communities.”
In April, HUD published PIH Notice 2022-11 seeking applications for the asset-building cohort of the MTW Expansion. The notice laid out the process by which PHAs with 6,000 or less combined units of public housing and HCV units would be selected for the asset-building cohort.
First authorized by Congress in 1996, MTW is a demonstration that provides public housing authorities the opportunity to redefine how they operate by giving them flexibility to try “outside the box” ideas that address local community needs in innovative ways. MTW allows PHAs the flexibility to create customized solutions to their community’s specific challenges. With the addition of the 18 PHAs selected for this cohort, HUD will have added a total of 87 PHAs to the MTW Demonstration Program since January 2021. MTW PHAs are now in 40 states and the District of Columbia.
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