US Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge visited Wilmington Wednesday to announce expansion and extension of pandemic-era relief programs for renters and homeowners.
Since March 2020, HUD has offered homeowners with Federal Housing Administration mortgages multiple options to avoid foreclosure, including forbearances and refinancing, if the pandemic prevented them from making payments. Fudge says HUD is extending the program another 18 months — it was previously scheduled to end this spring — and opening it to borrowers unable to make mortgage payments for any reason.
Nearly 9,000 Delaware borrowers have received forbearances through HUD’s program since the start of the pandemic — a higher per capita rate than most neighboring states.
Fudge also debuted plans to offer paths to mortgages for borrowers with low credit scores and unpaid student loans. "If you have good rental history, we’ll let that be your credit," she said. "If you’ve been paying your rent on time, we can get you a house because we know you’ve been paying your mortgage."
Her proposal overlaps with Delaware's ongoing tenant rent-reporting pilot program, which launched last month with a test group of 400 low-income renters.
Fudge also signaled HUD will likely continue an experimental grant program intended to fund housing for youth experiencing homelessness.
West End Neighborhood House Development Director Wes Davis says Fudge's comment is of particular interest to his organization, which provides transitional beds for youth ages 18 to 23.
West End Neighborhood House has not yet applied for HUD's so-called Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program grants because of a lack of data about young adults experiencing homelessness in Delaware.
"There hadn’t been any hard and fast numbers," he said, "and we thought it would be challenging to be competitive for a federal award without harder data."
Davis says that an extension of HUD’s grant program would give West End Neighborhood House a chance to make use of new and more robust data on youth homelessness in the state. Delaware is one of nine states that have yet to receive grant funding through HUD's Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program.
