Fair Housing Initiatives Program - Fair Housing Organizations Initiative (FHOI)

This Initiative provides funding to QFHOs, FHOs, and nonprofit groups organizing to build their capacity in fair housing enforcement, establish new fair housing enforcement organizations and/or provide fair lending enforcement. Under this component, these enforcement organizations will conduct fair housing enforcement activities in underserved areas as defined in “Program Definitions” of this NOFA, rural areas and/or areas with new immigrants (especially racial and ethnic minorities who are not English speaking or have limited English proficiency. There are three components under this FHOI Initiative: the (1) Establishing New Organizations Component, the (2) Continued Development General Component and the (3) Continued Development Mortgage Rescue Scams Component. 1) Establishing New Organizations Component (ENOC): Under this component HUD provides assistance to a FHIP qualified sponsoring organization that will establish a sponsored organization or to an organization to become a viable fair housing enforcement organization that will conduct fair housing activities in underserved areas (as defined in Section I.B. “Program Definitions” of this NOFA) ; rural areas and/or areas with new immigrants (especially racial and ethnic minorities who are not English-speaking or have limited English proficiency). If you are sponsoring an organization, the sponsoring organization must submit the application and must certify that the sponsored organization has the ability to become a FHO. The period of performance for the award of funds to assist in establishment of an organization is 12-18 months. Total funding is awarded to the sponsoring organization who will then distribute funding to the sponsored organization, based upon HUD’s performance criteria. If performance for the sponsored organization falls below “Fair”, the sponsoring organization will immediately notify the HUD GTR of the performance shortfalls and suspend all funding payments to the sponsored organization. The HUD GTR will then conduct a monitoring review of both the sponsored and sponsoring organizations to determine if payment should be reinstated or terminated. (2) Lending Discrimination Component (LDC) : This component will assist organizations that provide assistance to victims of fraud and lending abuse (for example, through counseling, loan workouts, etc.) to build their capacity to provide fair lending assistance and bring Fair Housing Act enforcement actions. (3) Continued Development General Component: This component will assist QFHOs, FHOs, other private nonprofit fair housing enforcement organizations and nonprofit groups in building their fair housing capacity in areas with high concentrations of mortgage scam activities. This component will also assist organizations in setting up fair housing satellite offices in other jurisdictions to enlarge their operations.