More than 1400 HUD Service Coordinators receive their funding on a calendar-year basis by grants from HUD. The shift from a fiscal-year to calendar-year funding cycle was made several years ago to help improve the timing of Service Coordinator grants to the nonprofit Section 202 affordable senior housing communities who employ the Service Coordinators. In the eighth month of calendar year 2021, HUD staff joined a call of LeadingAge’s Housing Advisory Group call today to discuss the disbursement of the grant funds. 

 HUD staff noted staffing problems that caused this year’s grant delays and provided a status update on the approximately $100 million HUD is distributing for grant-funded Service Coordinators.

The individual Service Coordinator records are currently being reviewed by HUD staff and approved by HUD headquarter staff. Once these are approved in HUD headquarters, the notices of awards will be issued by the Grant Specialists in the field. When the notice of award is issued, the grantee can accept that award within HUD’s GrantSolutions platform and then contracting stage of the grant will be completed.

HUD recommends grantees check GrantSolutions each day, beginning August 11, to see if their award is ready for acceptance.

Right now, 1400+ records are in the process of being funded through GrantSolutions. Right now, about half of them are queued up for review and approval and will be transmitted out to the Grant Specialists early this week. Then, the Grant Specialist will send them to the grantee.

Grantees should be on the lookout this week for the notification that a notice of award is ready for approval. As soon as grantees approve a notice of award, HUD can start the process of sending the contracting records to HUD’s accounting center. As of August 9, about 700 are in review by HUD staff. The other approximately 700 are still under review by the local grant specialist and have not been pushed forward for headquarters for review yet. If grantees are not in “review” status in GrantSolutions, grantees may wish to reach out to their Grant Specialist to see if there’s any additional information they need to be able to complete their review so HUD headquarters can then do its reviews.

The sooner the notice of awards are accepted, the sooner the contract for disbursement can occur.

HUD staff said that one of the things grantees can all be working on is their LOCCS (Line of Credit Control System) package for payment. Once the commitment has occurred, grantees will be able to submit their LOCCS transmission through ELOCCS and their grant specialist will be able to approve them.

HUD anticipates a lot of activity through August and hopes to have commitments in place so payment dispersals can start occurring. HUD would like to get as many records by mid-September. There’s a bit of a rush to make significant progress before HUD’s accounting system shuts down for 2+ weeks after mid-September. If the notice of awards are not approved by the time the accounting system is shut down then HUD has to wait until the accounting system comes back up to complete that process. If grantees can accept and approve the notice of awards before the accounting system takes its annual pause, HUD’s timeline can continue to move.