Housing Counseling Process Evaluation and Design of ... - HUD User

allow counseling agencies to accept funding from lenders as long as the relationship is disclosed to
clients and does not create a conflict of interest for the agency. 24
Summary
This chapter focused on the role that national and regional intermediaries and SHFAs play in the
housing counseling industry. As HUD’s commitment to housing counseling has grown, so has its
reliance on intermediaries and SHFAs as a means of channeling funding to local housing counseling
agencies. Intermediaries and SHFAs can use HUD housing counseling funds to provide counseling to
clients directly or can pass the funds through to affiliated organizations. In recent years, HUD has
awarded about 58 percent of its housing counseling funds to intermediaries and about 5 percent to
SHFAs.
Like the housing counseling agencies they support, the 20 intermediaries that receive HUD housing
counseling funds are a diverse group of organizations. Only 5 of the 20 intermediaries have a
primary mission of providing or supporting housing counseling; the others support housing
counseling to help meet goals related to increasing homeownership opportunities for minority
populations, helping seniors remain homeowners, preserving affordable housing, and building
individual and community assets. Most intermediaries used their HUD funding to support the full
range of counseling services, although one (AARP) focuses solely on providing training for HECM
counseling. NeighborWorks® also regularly receives funding to provide counselor training, while
NFCC and MMI also have received additional funding to provide HECM counseling.
SHFAs that fund housing counseling tend to focus on homeownership-related counseling to support
their state’s homeownership goals and their own homebuyer and reverse mortgage loan programs.
Indeed, all of the SHFAs interviewed for this study cited the important role that housing counseling
can play in preparing low-income families for homeownership. However, like intermediaries, SHFAs
that receive HUD funding generally fund the full range of counseling services (including rental and
homeless counseling) through local counseling affiliates. Over the past four years, 17 of 55 SHFAs
have received HUD Housing Counseling grants. 25
Intermediaries and SHFAs provide different types of support to their housing counseling affiliates.
The most important type of support is funding for housing counseling activities. Intermediaries and
SHFAs employ various methods for allocating counseling funds to affiliates; once funding allocations
are made, most intermediaries and SHFAs monitor the performance of their affiliates, but to varying
extents.
In addition to funding, a majority of agencies receive training through intermediaries and SHFAs.
The most common source for training is NeighborWorks® America, but housing counselors also
24
25
Housing Counseling Program; Final Rule, Federal Register Vol. 72, No. 188, September 27, 2007, pp.
55638-55654.
The total number of SHFAs (55) comes from membership information from the National Council of State
Housing Agencies (NCSHA).
Chapter 4. Intermediaries and State Housing Finance Agencies 57