FY18 NOFA Housing Counseling Training Grant

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The purpose of this assistance is to continue investing in the creation and maintenance of a professional and effective housing counseling industry that is able to meaningfully assist consumers by providing them with the information they need to make informed housing choices, and maximizes the impact of Federal funding appropriated for HUD’s Housing Counseling Program. HUD recognizes six (6) Core Topics in which housing counselors need to be competent. These are: 1. Financial Management; 2. Property Maintenance; 3. Homeownership and Tenancy; 4. Fair Housing and other Civil Rights Laws and Requirements 5. Housing Affordability; 6. Avoidance of, and responses to, rental and mortgage delinquency and avoidance of eviction and mortgage default. HUD recognizes that counselors may specialize in specific housing counseling topics, and that generally counselors will need more than general housing counseling training in order to provide high quality services that include general and specialized housing counseling topics. This NOFA provides notice of a grant program that supports the provision of both basic housing counseling training and specialized topics of training to help meet these perceived needs. This financial support will assist housing counseling agencies to increase the use of partnerships with local and state-wide organizations to provide additional place based training on state and local issues. In addition, this support should result in an increased number of training scholarships. Statutory requirements enacted in 2010 state that individual housing counselors participating in HUD’s Housing Counseling Program shall demonstrate, by written examination, that they are competent in providing counseling in each of the core topics. HUD has developed regulations to address the statutory requirements for counselor certification and continues to encourages housing counselors to seek education on these topics following publication of the final rule.

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