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» VISIT US ONLINE @ DSNEWS.COM 25 HUD AWARDS $1.6 BILLION IN GRANTS TO FIGHT HOMELESSNESS While President Obama has been silent on housing policy in the waning months of his administration, the fight to end homelessness in the United States—a quest he has made a priority since taking office in 2009—continues with more than a billion and a half dollars in grants awarded by HUD, according to an announcement by HUD on Tuesday. HUD has announced the awarding of $1.6 billion in grants to distribute to local programs to end homelessness across the United States and its territories, including Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. "A safe, stable home is the foundation for opportunity in all of our lives," HUD Secretary Julián Castro said. "at's why we're continuing to challenge communities to deploy proven strategies to help people experiencing homelessness find a place to call home. rough unprecedented partnership among every level of government and private, non-profit and philanthropic organizations, we know this goal is not just aspirational—it's achievable." About 6,400 local homeless housing and service programs across the United States and its territories will receive the funding. e round of funding, which is being awarded in the form of Tier 1 Continuum of Care (CoC) grants, supports the Obama Adminstration's efforts to end homelessness in the United States. HUD announced it will award $300 million in Tier 2 grants this spring to support hundreds more programs. "More than 20 communities and two entire states have leveraged the leadership of their continuums of care to build systems that have ended homelessness among our nation's veterans," said Matthew Doherty, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. "Working together with state and local leaders, CoCs continue to prove that a combination of the right strategies, enough resources, and urgent action can end homelessness in America for everyone." e grants are being awarded in the most competitive environment that HUD has experienced yet in the Continuum of Care program, according to HUD. In order to compete for this year's CoC grants, communities had to make challenging decisions, such as transferring funds from existing projects to new projects that will more substantially impact the homeless populations. In 2010, the Obama Administration and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, comprised of 19 federal agencies, launched the nation's first comprehensive strategy to eliminate homelessness, known as the Opening Doors: Federal Strategic Plan to Prevent and End Homelessness program. By 2015, HUD estimated that homelessness had been reduced by about 72,000 people in the previous five years since the program was launched—a decline of about 11 percent, down to an estimated 564,700 persons experiencing homelessness on any given night during 2015. HUD also states that veteran homelessness has dropped by 36 percent during that same period, and chronic homelessness has been reduced by about 22 percent in five years. HUD estimates that family homelessness has been reduced by about 19 percent in the five-year period, down to approximately 36,000 unaccompanied homeless youth and children. Last month, President Obama requested $11 billion for the Fiscal Year 2017 budget for HUD to put toward ending family homelessness. CAN DEAL AGENTS FIX A FADING PLS MARKET? Private-label securities‒‒mortgages without government involvement‒‒ have been a bit player since the financial collapse of 2008. And according to Laurie Goodman, director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, deal agents may just be the way to bring the sector back. In a recent report on the state of the PLS market, Goodman wrote that the securitiza- tion of products with no government involve- ment "has been trifling compared with both 2005 to 2007 and earlier periods." According to her report, new prime securitization was $12.1 billion in 2015, which is less than 9 percent of the $142 billion total of 2001. Likewise, private- label securitization of newly prime, Alt-A, and subprime mortgages totaled $13.7 billion last year, compared to $240.6 billion in 2001. "During the crisis," Goodman wrote, "the PLS mortgage market suffered the most disloca- tion of any securitized product group because of severe and widespread home price deprecia- tion." is, she added, highlighted the struc- tural weaknesses of these securities, and those weaknesses are, in turn, made worse by investor perceptions that the many conflicts of interest between servicers and investors have yet to be adequately addressed. e federal government has spent the better part of the last 18 months talking with institutional investors, issuers, servicers, ratings agencies, due diligence firms and other key stakeholders to discuss reforms needed to restart the PLS market, Goodman wrote. But while some ideas are being bandied about, the concept of deal agents‒‒those charged with looking out for the interests of investors‒‒is largely missing from existing deals. is is especially important, Goodman wrote, because "the disappearance of the PLS market has already affected the availability and cost of mortgages for borrowers who do not have the necessary credit to qualify for government- backed loans. And this group of borrowers is larger than it might otherwise be." On the servicing side, she wrote, "the deal agent would make sure servicers focus on maximizing the value of the assets and do no self-dealing" as well as ensure compliance among servicers. "e deal agent would also have the ability to pursue claims against servicers," she wrote, "even terminating them if necessary." If standardization regarding deal agents' roles can be set, she said, it would go a long way towards repairing a flagging PLS market in need of an overhaul. "Through unprecedented partnership among every level of government and private, non-profit and philanthropic organizations, we know this goal is not just aspirational—it's achievable." –HUD Secretary Julián Castro

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