SHIP LHAP Resources

The Florida Housing Coalition offers a new resource to assist SHIP staff. The Coalition’s website now contains a video summary of recent changes to the SHIP Program resulting from Senate Bill 360. Several changes have an impact on your Local Housing Assistance Plan (LHAP). This resource is especially timely considering that almost half of all SHIP jurisdictions are currently updating their LHAPs for a May 2nd, 2010 deadline. Ultimately, each jurisdiction must update its LHAP to some extent in response to these S.B. 360 topics.

There are four main topics to review. Each contains a video from the Coalition’s February 2010 workshop is accompanied by relevant handouts or powerpoint slides.
An Introductory Video about Senate Bill 360 and the new SHIP requirements is available here:
http://vimeo.com/10060536

See instructions below if you have difficulty viewing videos.


Green and Innovative Design
Your LHAP must now describe how one or more strategies address green building principles, innovative design, storm-resistant construction, or other elements that reduce long-term costs relating to maintenance, utilities, or insurance.

VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/10060850
POWER POINT
http://flhousing.org/sites/default/files/Green%20in%20LHAP.ppt
HANDOUT:
http://flhousing.org/sites/default/files/Green Aff Housing Example of FL Green Bldg CERT.pdf
This handout is an example of a home built with affordable housing subsidy that includes features that qualify it for a green housing certification from the Florida Green Building Coalition.
HANDOUT #2:
http://flhousing.org/sites/default/files/HUD%20Multi-Family%20WAP.pdf
This handout supplements the multifamily housing guidance provided in the video. It is a power power presentation about multifamily weatherization performed by Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) staff in other states.


Special Housing Needs
Your LHAP must also now describe how one or more strategies make affordable residential units available to eligible persons with special housing needs, like homeless people, the elderly, migrant farmworkers, and persons with disabilities.

VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/10086141
POWER POINT:
http://flhousing.org/sites/default/files/Special%20Needs%20in%20LHAP.ppt
HANDOUT: http://flhousing.org/sites/default/files/Youth%20Leaving%20Foster%20Care%20CONTACTS%20Dec09.doc
While it is not an absolute requirement, the Legislature specifically encourages each SHIP jurisdiction to offer housing assistance to one specific special needs population: young adults leaving the foster care system. Contacting your local community-based care agencies providing foster services is often the first step to arranging for housing services for this at-risk population. This handout is a list of contact agencies.


Manufactured Homes
The SHIP definition of “eligible housing” now includes “manufactured housing constructed after June 1994 … for home ownership or rental” although no more than 20 percent of a jurisdiction’s funds may be used for manufactured housing. Each jurisdiction should consider whether or not to provide rehabilitation or purchase assistance for manufactured homes. Any decision on this topic will require updates to your LHAP.

VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/10086781
HANDOUT: http://flhousing.org/sites/default/files/Manufactured%20H%20items%20Combined.pdf
This handout is a sample lien and form to be used when securing SHIP assistance to a manufactured home that is personal property. Background information and guidance is included.


Preservation and Additional Topics
The Legislature encourages each SHIP jurisdiction to develop an LHAP strategy for the preservation of assisted rental housing.

VIDEO: http://vimeo.com/10086550
POWER POINT:
http://flhousing.org/sites/default/files/Preservation%20in%20LHAP.ppt
HANDOUT
http://flhousing.org/sites/default/files/Rental%20Rehab%20strategy.pdf This is a sample strategy for acquisition and rehabilitation of rental housing. Workshop participants reviewed and discussed what they liked about it and what they would improve upon.


VIDEO TroubleshootingTo view these videos, your computer must have Adobe Flash Player, which is available for free at http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/. Even with this software, in order to initially view a video you may have to press the “full screen view” symbol, which is the symbol 4 outward pointing arrows located on the right side of the control box at the bottom of the video.

Rehab Resource Available

The Coalition’s November workshop “Issues and Challenges of Owner Occupied Rehabilitation” highlighted Dr. Tom Taylor as a guest instructor. He applied his expertise in urban planning and mediation, facilitation and other collaborative processes to the example of working with rehabilitation contractors. Dr. Taylor provided a tool that may support your jurisdiction’s rehabilitation program. It is a contract and set of guidelines to assist owners, contractors and SHIP staff in coordinating their efforts and agreeing to a set of goals. The document is available on the Coalition’s website at:
flhousing.org/sites/default/files/Rehab Project Partnership Agreement.pdf

FHOP TRACKING SPREADSHEET

The Florida Housing Coalition has updated its SHIP spreadsheet to assist you with tracking FHOP funds. TRAKFHOP is available on the Coalition’s website at this link:

www.flhousing.org/sites/default/files/TRAKFHOP May 2010.xls

TRAKFHOP closely resembles the SHIP tracking spreadsheet, with a summary page and Forms 1, 2 and 3. Throughout the spreadsheet, however, color coded cells indicate where FHOP-specific data is included:
• Most notably, the bottom half of the Summary Page now includes a blue box reporting the amount of FHOP expended funds per income category, including 121-140% AMI and ‘Above 140%’.
• Form 1 contains new columns to track FHOP buyers above the Moderate category and to track the date FHOP is repaid. It also includes a column for reporting the household’s income, as reported on the tax return.
• The “Date of Purchase” has been added alongside ‘Sales Price or Value’ on Form 3.
• Finally, the revenue section of the Summary page distinguishes between FHOP repayments and other types of Program Income.

TRAKFHOP has also been updated to reflect a SHIP change from Senate Bill 360 permitting a jurisdiction to adopt strategies that assist households between 121-140% of the area median income (AMI). The ability to separately track these households has been added for the first three strategies on TRAKFHOP. If a jurisdiction opts to assist households at 121-140% of AMI, these recipients will be considered part of the moderate income category. For this reason, the Summary Page counts the units and assistance expended on households at 121-140% AMI alongside all other Moderate data in columns M and N.

To avoid accidental deletion of formulas, TRAKFHOP is protected. The password to unprotect the spreadsheet remains the same: the word ship in lower case letters. If you have questions about the tracking sheet or have discovered an overlooked formula error, contact Michael Chaney at chaney@flhousing.org.

Expanded Coalition Website Resource: More SHIP Clips

The Florida Housing Coalition has updated the SHIP Clips that are available for review on its website. “SHIP Clips” is a regular column in the Coalition’s quarterly journal, Housing News Network. The Coalition’s website, www.flhousing.org, now includes the SHIP Clips content from the most recent several years in the “Programs” section. With answers on SHIP topics about income qualification, eligible use, homebuyer strategies and more, the SHIP Clips content on the website has now more than doubled. You may also review this content—over 60 pages in all—by visiting www.shipfaq.blogspot.com

ANNUAL REPORT Update: Don’t Forget Certification Forms

Annual report certification forms are crucial, and no annual report is complete without them. There are two certification forms, and both may be downloaded from the ‘References’ tab, the rightmost tab on the web annual report. Since the certification forms must be signed by your chief elected official, you must mail them to Florida Housing to supplement your web-based annual reports.

The first certification form is very straight forward. It certifies the accuracy of the annual report. The second certification form addresses the implementation of regulatory reform activities. This form is one main method that Florida Housing uses to document a jurisdiction’s compliance with the requirement to implement a minimum of two “incentive strategies”.

Section 67-37.019 (5) of the SHIP Rule outlines the incentive strategy requirements for all SHIP jurisdictions:
The local government staff or entity with administrative authority for a local housing assistance plan shall provide documented evidence to the Corporation or its designated monitoring agent, that:
(a) Permits, as defined in Sections 163.3164(7) and (8), F.S., for affordable housing projects are expedited to a greater degree than other projects; and
(b) There is an ongoing process for review of local policies, ordinances, regulations, and plan provisions that increase the cost of housing prior to their adoption.

These two incentive strategies are often referred to as (a) Expedited Permitting and (b) Ongoing Review. Sections 1 and 2 of the regulatory reform certification are statements to evidence that the jurisdiction has implemented these two incentive strategies.

Section 3 asks for details resulting from your jurisdiction’s ongoing review process. You must report the estimated per unit cost increases for housing construction that have resulted from the creation of any new policies, ordinances, regulations, fees or plans during the most recently completed state fiscal year. In order to complete this form with accurate information, talk with the group or individual in your jurisdiction that performs the “Ongoing Review” responsibility. Ask them about their review process during the 12 months of this last fiscal year. If there have been no new policies to increase costs, enter $0.

Section 4 is very similar to Section 3. Provide the per unit estimated cost increases for rehabilitation activities that have resulted from new local policies, ordinances, regulations and more that were considered during the state fiscal year.

How should your jurisdiction go about estimating how much a particular policy will increase the cost of housing? The SHIP Statute and Rule provide no guidance or method by which a local jurisdiction must determine the cost increase. Such estimates are a local determination, and the jurisdiction should retain back up material to justify the dollar amounts reported on this certification form.


THE DEADLINE IS APPROACHING
Every jurisdiction must submit their reports by next Tuesday, September 15th. The Coalition is available to help you ‘cross the finish line’ and submit your annual reports. This year, the Coalition is available on Tuesdays and Thursdays to provide this assistance through its technical assistance line: 800 677-4548. In addition, a full and updated collection of frequently asked questions about annual reports is available at http://faqannualreports.blogspot.com/.

ANNUAL REPORT Update: Recent Change Affects Form 4

Check the ‘Review’ tab of each of your three annual reports. Do they show an error involving ‘Expended Funds’ reported on Form 4? If so, this may be the result of an update Florida Housing has made to the web annual report.

For each SHIP distribution, you must report details about all program funds that have been expended, including the name and address of each assisted household. The strategy that was used to provide assistance is listed alongside the name of each recipient. Florida Housing has now programmed the web system to total up the expended funds for each strategy. Now, a “Summary by Strategy” total appears at the end of the list of expended funds you have added to Form 4.

There’s a good reason for the change; it allows Florida Housing to review the amount expended per strategy and compare this with what is reported on each strategy line of Form 1. If the expended fund figures do not match, this new improvement may make it easier to identify specifically where the error occurs. For example, consider a jurisdiction that has expended funds on three strategies. The ‘Summary by Strategy’ totals show that the funds expended on Strategies A and B exactly match the figures on the top of Form 1. The total expended for Strategy C, conversely, does not match Form 1, so it is the source of the error. Correcting this report will go quickly since one is able to focus attention on only a portion of the data provided.

A Related Question:
On Form 4, I added an amount of expended funds per strategy that exactly matches the figures reported on Form 1. Yet the Review Tab still shows an error. Specifically, it indicates:
“There are no "Expended Funds" records for the "Homebuyer Assistance" strategy listed under the Distributed Funds' "Home Ownership" section on Form 1.”
Please provide guidance.

Answer:
The error in this case is caused by the fact that this jurisdiction labeled a strategy “Homebuyer Assistance” on Form 1, but called it “Purchase Assistance” next to the name of each buyer listed on Form 4. In order for Florida Housing’s new programming to work properly, the name of each strategy must be identical on Forms 1 and 4. Pay attention to capitalization, since this also makes a difference. In this case, the jurisdiction decided to change the strategy name on Form 1 to “Purchase Assistance” and the error message disappeared.



THE DEADLINE IS APPROACHING
Every jurisdiction must submit their reports by September 15th. The Coalition is available to help you ‘cross the finish line’ and submit your annual reports. This year, the Coalition is available on Tuesdays and Thursdays to provide this assistance through its technical assistance line: 800 677-4548. In addition, a full and updated collection of frequently asked questions about annual reports is available at http://faqannualreports.blogspot.com/.

ANNUAL REPORT Update: Achieving Set-Aside Compliance

Among the most fundamental requirements of the SHIP program, funds must be expended in compliance with the Income, Homeownership and Construction/Rehab Set-Asides. Florida Housing has historically noticed that difficulties achieving set-aside compliance are among the most common of annual report problems.


WHAT GETS COUNTED?
The SHIP set-aside percentage calculations are not based only on the annual distribution. You must include other revenue sources when calculating set-aside compliance. Compliance with the Homeownership set-aside (65 percent of funds) and the Construction/Rehab set-aside (75 percent of funds) is based on the sum total of the Distribution plus Recaptured Funds. Compliance with the Income Set-aside, on the other hand, is calculated based on the total of all sources of SHIP revenue, including carry forward funds and program income.

Keep in mind the 2009 change to the definition of Recaptured Funds. Starting with the annual reports this year, there will likely be much more program income than recaptured funds reported. Now narrowly defined, recaptured funds are only a repayment that a SHIP jurisdiction receives when it provides SHIP funding for a housing project, but this funding is ultimately not used to assist eligible households.


RE-ASSIGN EXPENSES AS NEEDED
What happens if you create your 06/07 annual report, only to notice for the first time that you are out of compliance with one or more of the set-asides? What if, for example, you have fully expended your 06/07 funds but have only dedicated 70 percent—rather than the minimum 75 percent required—to the construction/rehab set-aside? The most straight forward solution may be to re-assign assistance expenses between SHIP distributions.

In the case stated above, all 06/07 funds have been expended. It is very likely that a significant amount of the jurisdiction’s 07/08 distribution may also be expended. Identify one or two households assisted with 07/08 funds that comply with the construction/rehab set-aside. Re-assign these expenses to the spreadsheet tracking 06/07 funds. Similarly, re-assign one or two 06/07 cases of set-aside non-compliant assistance to the 07/08 spreadsheet. Determine if this exchange has resulted in enough 06/07 expenses that comply with the set-aside, and re-assign additional 07/08 expenses as needed to achieve set-aside compliance.

The exercise of re-assigning expenses from one SHIP distribution to another is not uncommon. It may also be used to achieve compliance with an expenditure or encumbrance deadline. Whenever an expense is re-assigned to a different distribution, care should be taken to clearly indicate ‘from where’ and ‘to where’ an expense is being re-assigned. In this way, one may still fully reconcile SHIP tracking spreadsheets with the jurisdiction’s general ledger. The example above is a small and simple case of re-assigning funds. If your case is more complicated, call the Florida Housing Coalition for additional guidance as you work to re-assign funds and cure set-aside noncompliance.


LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SET-ASIDES
There is more to be said about set-aside compliance. Consider reviewing the videos on this topic at the Coalition’s website, http://www.flhousing.org/. On the top pull-down menu for “Local Government and Nonprofit Developer Tools”, select (SHIP) Program Update. These videos are available under the headline “SHIP Annual Report: Training Videos” and are about 7 minutes each.


START YOUR REPORTS NOW
Every jurisdiction must submit their reports by this September 15th and there is no extension available for submitting them after this date. Start now to ensure their timely completion. Many administrators find that these reports require more of their attention than originally expected.

The Coalition fields questions on a myriad of report-related topics. This year, the Coalition is available on Tuesdays and Thursdays to provide this assistance through its technical assistance line: 800 677-4548. In addition, a full and updated collection of frequently asked questions about annual reports is available at http://faqannualreports.blogspot.com/.