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Welcome, everyone. My time is 1:58. My name is Heather Brown. I will be a facilitator today. We have 80 participants so far. We have 300 signed up. We will give it a few minutes and let people join, then we will get started. 
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Since the number is still moving, we will give it three or four minutes and start at 2:05. If someone wants to get a quick drink or something, they are welcome to do that. We will start at 2:05. Thank you. 
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Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Robin Dixon-Jefferson. I will be your producer for this event this afternoon. I wanted to go over the logistics of the meeting, quickly in case anyone is having audio connection issues. Please, when you dial into the event or select come into the event, if you are having issues with your audio, you can at the top when you go in, request your telephone number and have the system call you back using the passcode and password that is noted here on the slide. All attendees for this event are going to be muted upon entry. They will be asking questions during this event, accepting questions, so if you have questions, we ask everyone to please look at the right-hand side of your computer screen where you see the word chat and the little circle box. Chat to everyone so that the panelist and everyone in the event can see your question to ensure that we get those questions to the panelist. And with that, I will now pass this over to Miss Heather Brown who will be your moderator for this afternoon. 
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Thank you so much, Robin. That afternoon, everyone. Welcome to CFPB's financial exchange or CFPB's FinEx as it is known. The webinar today is on helping clients who are experiencing housing insecurity. As I mentioned for those of you a little bit earlier, my name is Heather Brown. On the program [ Indiscernible ] for today's program and I will be the host for today's webinar. Many people are having trouble with mortgage and rent payments during the pandemic. We have data on the current state of housing insecurity in the United States. They will also share some encouraging news that financial practitioners should know about help that is available for consumers who are struggling with housing insecurity so you can provide this information to those you serve. Next, I'm going to introduce our wonderful panel of speakers. We are very excited to have 3 speakers for you today to cover separate topics that I think you will find helpful in dealing with those of you who have clients who are dealing with housing insecurity. First, I would like to introduce Vanssa Megaw. Vanessa is a senior policy advisor on the emerging housing team at treasury -- at the Department of treasury. She is the person for research on promising practices for the emergency rentals assistance program and has efforts to develop resources for E.R. a grantees -- that is for the emergency rental assistance program -- as they build out new government infrastructures to support renters experiencing financial hardship. She also regularly engages with E.R.A. stakeholders to understand engagement with the program outside of this detail, Vanessa is CFPB's subject matter on debt relief service markets. You might have heard her on an earlier webinar doing a presentation related to COVID . Prior to the Bureau, she received a dual Masters degree in public policy and business administration from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and her undergraduate degree from Mauk -- Mt. Holyoke College. We also have today, Stephanie Williams. She works in HUD's housing counseling office. Stephanie is a deputy director with the housing program and OHC supports a nationwide network of housing Council agencies to assist consumers in making recent responsible choices to address their unique housing needs. In her role, Stephanie and her team are responsible for the mission of training and certifying housing counselors and increasing public awareness of HUD's housing counseling programs to enable all families to access safe, healthy and affordable housing. And we know for the CFPB stakeholder list, we have a large group of HUD housing counselors that are certified that are members of our mailing list. So if you are not anybody who is on this call, feel free to join it. I will give you the information on how to do that shortly. Stephanie has also worked in the area of policy and grant administration where she developed and drafted housing cancel -- [ Indiscernible ] -- she has been involved with the housing program notice of funding prior to joining HUD in 2008, Stephanie's background included public and the private and nonprofit experience in affordable housing community affairs. She also has a background of intellectual property lysing -- Licensing and municipal finance. She holds a degree from Florida University of law and Cornell University. She and her husband have two sons. At our final speaker is our own Jessica Russell, mortgage data programmer for CFPB. She is the product owner for CFPB's public mortgage data tool, and the website for that is consumer finance.gov/H MDA, and you will get more links from her as she gives her presentation. Among many accomplishment that the Bureau, she co-authored a congressional report on reverse mortgages. She held previous positions in economic analysis at the urban Institute. Jessica has been with CFPB for over nine years. She has an MBA from MIT Sloan school of management and an MBA in economics from Mt. Holyoke College. So we welcome all three of our esteemed panelists. We are excited to hear you present. I want to thank our production team from events that did the work in the background and are keeping things moving smoothly today. I want to give a few introductory slides and a disclaimer then we are going to move to the speakers of the day. This presentation is being made by a consumer financial protection Bureau representative on behalf of the Bureau. It does not constitute legal interpretation, guidance, or advice of the Bureau. Any opinions or views stated by the presenter are the presenters own and may not represent the Bureau's views. The inclusion of links or references to third-party sites does not necessarily reflect the Bureau's endorsement of the third party. The views expressed on the third party, or products or services offered on the third-party site. The Bureau has not necessarily vetted these third parties, their content, or any products or services they may offer. There may be other possible entities or resources that are not listed that might also start your -- serve your needs. The mission of the CFPB is we are a 24 century agency that helps consumer finance markets work by making rules more effective by consistently and fairly enforcing those rules and by empowering consumers to take more control over their economic lives. And many of you have probably been to our coronavirus pandemic webpage. You will hear more about housing resources on that page. But you see, there are four areas on the page, the top left quadrant is information on mortgage and housing assistances. And this is the webpage link for resources for financial educators. If you are a financial practitioner and this is your first time at a webinar or perhaps you did not receive the invite for this directly, I encourage you to go to this page and this link and you can see the email address in the right column in the middle where you can put in your email, click the sign-up button. That's how you join the mailing list so you can get a notice of upcoming webinars and we have a full schedule of webinars throughout the year, so we look forward to having everyone come to those. Here are some actual links you will be interested in. I won't go into detail on these now because you will sleep -- see the slide at the end. Feel free to snap a picture of this. You can request slides if you would like to get a copy. Third bullet from the top is the email box where you can send an email and request copies of the slides. The slides on the recording will be posted to the webpage that I previously showed you. Okay? With that, I am going to hand it off to our next speaker of the day who is Vanssa Megaw, Vanssa Megaw, you all set? 
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Yes. Thank you, Heather. 
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All right. And thank you to the CFPB staff and participants for making the presentation possible. My name is Vanssa Megaw. I am the senior advisor at the emerging housing team. I spend a lot of my time talking to emergency rental assistance grantees about how they are implement in their programs, what strategies they are using to get them off the ground, and so it has been a very exciting time. I am happy to talk to you a little about that today. First, a little disclaimer, this presentation is designed to give an overview of educational purposes. I have simplified some of the details about guidelines just for communication purposes. So this should not be construed as legal advice or guidance from treasury. For official guidance, please go to the treasury website. So, the emergency rental assistance program is a block grant program offered two states, territories, counties and cities of over 200,000 residents, tribes and TDA cheese that is designed to help renters with housing costs including rent and utilities. Grantees then create programs to help households avoid eviction and housing insecurity. One of the main goals of this is to help the spread of the COVID-19 virus and avoid -- related to what happens with overcrowding and just all the negative health effects that happen with homelessness. It also alleviates the financial distress of countless landlords who rely on rental income to support their families and support stronger communities. So, each grantee has the discretion to decide how they want to administer the program within their own direction. And since I am talking to a lot of financial educators out there, some of you might be part of the administration of these programs as many have decided to outsource the administration to their parties, many times nonprofits have experience with financial counseling. Other grantees are administrating programs in house and have -- reaching out to organizations to help with outreach. So there is a variety of models out there. okay, here we go. So this was a really challenging thing to do. Prior to this year, there was not a robust infrastructure to help renters who are struggling with their payments. And definitely not on this scale. Some spaces had some programs, but this is something that has largely been built in the last several months. This treasury guidance was thought to help grantees to reach -- more effectively reach high need populations through recommendations for connecting larger eviction prevention and eviction diversion programs. We have guidance that allows homeless families to gain assistance. We encourage linguistically and culturally competent outreach to families in need. There is a lot of guidance around streamlining and allowing more flexibilities and documentation on income and all the various requirements. There are also -- there is also guidance that allows for more efficient payments and identification of potential recipients and more efficient payments through large landlords and utility providers. So, what can E.R. a programs provide? In very high general terms, rental assistance can cover up to 18 months of rental assistance. This can cover back rent or perspective rent. Then the person does have to be a renter. This can also cover utilities such as gas, water, sewer, electricity, trash removal, and again, the key thing is that the person has to be a renter in order to get assistance on the housing costs. While there are expenses that might be appropriate to provide to beneficiaries including Internet service, late fees, relocation expenses, for the renter -- in some cases, hotel stays. And as I mentioned a little earlier, we have also provided guidance that if a tenant does not yet have a rental obligation, there is a mechanism by which the grantee can provide an otherwise eligible household with a document [ Indiscernible ] understands the grantee will pay the landlord on behalf of the household if the landlord and household enter into a qualifying lease for at least six months. So this is a new thing at cylinder development among grantees, but it's an interesting development and flexibility that grantees are offered. There is also a limited amount of E.R.A. funds that can be used for stability services. These can include eviction prevention, funds for mediation between landlords and tenants, funds for housing counseling, fair housing counseling, services for survivors of domestic abuse or human trafficking, specialized housing services for individuals with disabilities or seniors. This depends, of course, on how the grantee identifies as pressing community needs and what would be helpful to meet the needs of high-risk populations, at risk of being homeless. I'm sorry. I am working on -- there we go. So, who qualifies for the ERA assistance? Again, this is in general terms. There is variation by grantee and program design. There has to be an obligation to pay rent. They must demonstrate financial hardship during the pandemic. There must be a risk of homelessness or housing instability. This can include living in unsafe or overcrowded conditions. And the family -- the household must be a low income household. By large, it means that their income does not exceed 80% of the area median income. The statute also requires that grantees prioritize assistance to households with incomes less than 50% of the area mean income with one or more individuals, or when one or more individuals have not been employed for the 90 day period within receiving the application. I mentioned we provided flexibilities for documentation. I think, this is a little nuts and bolts. I think it is interesting and helpful for financial educators to know that these flexibilities are out there. so grantees can have category dribble -- kata corbel legibility [ Indiscernible ] for a state or federal program with eligibility requirements or income eligibility requirements, and that can help streamline the process. We also allow for fact specific proxies. That determines that the grantee lives in an area, for instance, it can be a geographic proxy where a person lives in a low income area, then combined with self attestation about their income, that can help streamline the eligibility requirement of identifying who is in low income households. All right. So I mentioned I spent a lot of time talking to folks about what they are doing on the ground to help reach low income populations, increase effectiveness of the program, and we are engaged in an iterative process of building out, promising practices on our website -- so this is the website homepage. But if you look to the side, there is a section called promising practices. And there is a bunch of themes we are building out of our library of promising practices around. Most recently, we had provided more updates and eviction diversion strategies and materials. We have provided more information about self attestation forms where applicants attest to eligibility requirements being true. And there is a lot of information about outreach to target populations that are likely to be important E.R.A. beneficiaries. Let's see. I am going to highlight a couple of these things. So first of all, let's talk a little bit about culturally and linguistically competent outreach. Some across the country, grantees are looking to strategies to reach areas that are disproportionately affected by the COVID but -- a lot of these times they need additional support. So translation services are very important here. And many grantees are looking to have translated their applications into multiple languages, providing multiple application channels to apply is very important, including online, and in person. A lot are deploying call centers with 211 partnerships or engaging with housing counselors for call-center support. And a lot are looking to partnerships with organizations of high cultural levels of competence. So for instance, the city of San Antonio has been very intentional in contracting community organizations to reach target populations. They have started contracting with local healthcare organizations, which in turn, works with 29 grassroots organizations that have deep ties to the community. This includes organizations like, for example, one that provides support to domestic workers, and they have strong ties to the local Spanish-speaking community and can provide really high tech support or accessing rental assistance. Administrators have also noted that it is really helpful to partner with organizations that have a lot of capabilities of conducting in-person outreach while maintaining social distancing health standards and being able to do that safely in the pandemic environment. The state of Maine has translated their application into eight languages, and program administrators have found that building partnerships with cultural brokers are really important to making sure that some of their immigrant populations are accessing this program. There is a large Somali immigrant population. They have had really strong partnerships with those programs. The state of Illinois has grassroots networks with trusted local businesses. They have leveraged their Latino consulates and have a lot of visibility here in this community, and they have also practiced a lot of ethic media through those partnerships. The state of North Carolina has noted that they engaged in a lot of partnerships with [ Indiscernible ] systems to identify families that are likely to need E.R.A. support, and Michelin County has found strong partnership opportunities with the local library system where they already have social workers integrated into the system and they can provide a high touch environment as well. So those are some examples we highlight on our webpage, that there is a lot happening across the country. We have also provided a lot of resources with how E.R.A. grantees are connecting with diversion programs. This involves partnering with courts, working with legal aid, working with mediators and up-and-coming touch points. It also allows for a touch point for human services as well. So we include examples like Memphis, Shelby County in Tennessee, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Louisville, Kentucky who have multifaceted systems with a lot of data sharing. Data sharing can support tenant interventions and eviction hotspots working with large landlords, for instance, identifying landlords who might be doing a lot of evictions and seeking to pull in rental assistance earlier in the process. They can avoid housing instability for these families. There are also, as I mentioned, there are opportunities for mediation, which seems to smooth the process for everybody. E.R.A. funds can be used to support mediation in these cases, and people end up with better outcomes. -- By accessing the programs. Many grantees are doing pathways to housing programs and touch points for social services. So finally, I would like to note, so this is what we are doing with grantees. At the treasury, we are focused on program implementation. We have been working with the CFPB a lot to build out materials that are focused on what consumers and landlords need to know about the emergency rental assistance program, what the broad strokes are of the program, and what they might be able to expect when they reach out to the E.R.A. grantee. We have a lookup tool to find the emergency rental assistance program locally, and we are in regular communication with the CFPB about this to make sure it is the best resource possible. And we have also been engaged in outreach and activities and promoting outreach activities across the government with other partnerships across the country to try to encourage people to know about the E.R.A. program, medicate to landlords that the program is for them, too, and they are beneficiaries of these programs, and a lot of these nationally oriented tools link back to the CFPB but we encourage people to know their local program and direct people to those local programs as well. Take the messaging that is available in these toolkits and help people to get to their programs. So with that, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it. I am going to pass along this presentation to Stephanie Williams to discuss housing counseling. Thank you. 
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Thank you so much, Vanessa. While Stephanie is getting queued up to speak, I wanted you to know you had quite a few questions that came up to the host in the chat. In order to see those, can you go to your team's account? We set up a little link because some of the questions aren't showing up in our chat. Go to teams. You will see a group for us and you will see the questions. At the end of everyone's presentation, you can answer your questions. To all the questions up to 235 are for you. And if you can't access teams then email me. I will send you a copy. All right? So Stephanie, are you all set? 
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I sure am. Thank you. 
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Okay. I am not seeing Stephanie's first slide yet. Maybe I could pop it up there. okay. There we go. 
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Okay, great. Can you hear me okay? 
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I can hear you just fine. Thank you. 
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Okay, excellent. I will begin. Good afternoon, everyone. I am Stephanie Williams as Heather said with HUD's office of counseling. I am very glad to be here today. I wanted to start off by thanking the consumer protection Bureau for their supportive housing counseling, and last week, the office of housing counseling had its annual housing counseling conference. It was a four-day event for our housing counseling agencies and other industry stakeholders and CFPB joined our conference and presented as well. So it is nice to be working together again one week later. I think that we at HUD and all of us on the call now as panelists and participants are always cognizant of the value and wisdom in partnering and collaborating and pooling our resources and thoughts and ideas and I think, during this COVID-19 pandemic, that has become even more clear. So once again, the office of housing counseling is glad to have this opportunity. So during my time with you today, I am going to cover a few things on our agenda. First, I want to provide an overview of the housing counseling program. Then, very importantly, this is very significant and meaningful for us especially recently. I want to talk a little bit about housing counseling certification. I will give a little bit of information about how to find a participating counseling agency, and then we will share some resources and other information. I will say, generally, I think that the value in a lot of these presentations is not only the information that you get while you are in attendance, of course, but it is learning about the resources and references that you have afterwards. Because it is a lot of information, a lot of good information from all the participants between our handouts and information that we are sharing, you will have some good reference afterwards. I am not seeing my -- I think I am missing my slides. I might need a little technical assistance here. 
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There you go. Is this what you are --? 
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Stephanie, can you see them now? 
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Yeah, that is not mine quite yet. 
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Okay. 
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That is my cover slide, but I'm not seeing others. While we figure that out, I can move forward, because we have the information in multiple ways. I think it is always helpful to frame what housing counseling is, and to do that, we want to share with the missing -- mission of housing counseling is. Some of you might already have familiarity with it. If you do, this will be a quick review just sort of reinforcing for you with the housing counseling program is. So our mission in office of housing counseling is to help families obtain, sustain and retain their homes. We accomplish this through a network of HUD approved counseling agencies and certified counselors. We have a network of approximately a little over 1600 housing counseling agencies. It is a national network. What is exciting is, as of recently, we have presence in Guam and the northern Marriott is now. HUD monitors the compliance of the agencies that are participating in the program. We monitor for conflict of interest and also the quality of housing counseling. This is paramount because we are able to support the agencies in their provision of counseling services and compliance with the housing counseling program requirements which, of course, benefits the consumers to make sure they are receiving the services they need to address their needs. And HUD is able to connect clients with participating counseling agencies through our website, searching through geographic area, ZIP Code, and also type of service that the consumers may be looking for. Through the housing counseling program, we also provide grant funding to qualified agencies in the program, anticipating agencies to cover the cost associated with housing counseling and administering their programs. In fiscal year 20 we awarded $52.5 million and we expect to see more monies awarded in our upcoming grant competition. Notice the funding opportunity. So funds are always much-needed, so it is a great benefit if you can receive those funds. 
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Stephanie, your deck should be able to be controlled by you now. It should have all your slides. 
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There we go. Thank you. 
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You are welcome. Sorry about that. 
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That's no problem. We are all caught up now. We are on the same page. Thank you, Heather. So this slide gives you a sense of what the national housing Council activity was for fiscal year 20. You will see the largest slice of the pie is in group education, the 38%, and typically, that group education is in the areas of prepurchase and financial literacy. The other areas of housing counseling are for one-on-one counseling. This is where the counselors meet individually with clients to provide independent expert advice. It is customized to whatever their needs are. So a one-on-one counseling session must include intake, client budget, a financial and housing affordability analysis, a client action plan and follow-up with the client to ensure that their needs are being met. That is what constitutes housing Counsel. In fiscal year 20, you can see 957,000+ consumers were provided counseling services. So this next slide gives you a little more data to highlight the impact of housing counseling in several areas. You will see that it is a sustainable household budget developed for clients. This is key because it gives the counselors the ability to help clients know where they are with respect to purchasing a home, if that's what they are looking to do, or if, in fact, renting may be a wiser choice for them while they prepare for homeownership, so that is why the numbers are so high for developing a sustainable household budget. That is a key component of housing counseling. This data, I will add, is 9902 housing counseling program data. It is available on our website. So you can see it currently for fiscal year 21, we have not yet published the end of year, of course, because we have a few more months until we get to the end of fiscal year 21. You can see from quarter to quarter, that is where the data is published, what the housing counseling activity looks like. One thing that might be beneficial is that users can also search and sort the data down to the state level. So there are all kinds of sort of data points and information that are accessible through the 9902 data. Well, this next slide is particularly significant because as of August 1st, 2021, just a few weeks ago, all housing counselors that participate in the housing counseling program need to be HUD certified. This was a congressionally mandated requirement that HUD and the office of housing counseling carried through, so any housing counseling that is required under any program administered by HUD shall be provided only by organizations and counselors certified by the Secretary. And the specific definition of a HUD certified counselor is a counselor who has passed the HUD certification exam and works for HUD approved counseling agency. I mentioned when I began that HUD had its annual conference last week, and it was a really fantastic opportunity to celebrate the accomplishments of the housing counselors who participated in taking the exam and obtaining their housing counseling certification credentials. The exam was rigorous. It required a lot of study and preparation and so, we are pleased that counselors are recognized more fully as trusted professionals and resource for consumers. And this credential, again, has just elevated the profession of housing counseling and housing counselors in the industry. It was a hard one victory to take the certification. I would add in the August 1st 2021 final compliance date, it was actually an extension. When the pandemic hit, HUD was very concerned. The industry was very concerned that the housing counseling continued. And clients and customers received all of the assistance that they needed at a time when the services were critically important. And so, we did not want the certification deadline to be an obstacle to counselors being able to provide that counseling. So that was an extension that was in response to the pandemic. The other thing that I wanted to highlight is, so most of the housing counseling agencies are operating virtually and offering remote counseling to clients. This is something we have started to see over the years. When the housing counseling initially -- most clients came face-to-face. The majority of clients would come face-to-face to receive counseling services. That was the preference. I think, as technology evolved and certainly, during the pandemic, there has been more of a preference for virtual and remote counseling. And a number of the agencies now, even if the counselors are physically in their offices are still just conducting the counseling sessions remotely. In other words, they are not having clients come into their offices. One of the things that HUD did, again, in response to the pandemic was to waive certain program requirements for counseling agencies. So the requirement that in person services be made available for clients to receive counseling, we were able to waive that. So it is not a requirement, temporarily. Counseling can continue, once again, remotely. If there is one thing that you walk away with besides getting an overview of the housing counseling program, I do hope that it is for you to bookmark the office of housing counseling exchange page. It is on the resource page at the end of this deck as well. But here, we have listed a number of links to the HUD exchange that have -- information populated on the topics of COVID-19 emergency information for housing counselors. In addition, the office of housing counseling, specifically my group, the office of outreach and capacity building within the office of housing counseling, facilitates expensive webinars and trainings for counselors on various topics. In keeping with the presentation here, there are a number of COVID topics, related topics on rental counseling for various options and funding for COVID. So I encourage you to look at the webinar archives and, one of the things that may be helpful is the trainings, in addition to the power points for quick reference, just about all of them include transcripts. So you can sort of, you know, quickly kind of scan for information that you think might be helpful on a particular topic that you are clicking on to get additional information when we are all very busy helping consumers and sort of taking care of our program area responsibilities. It can sometimes be difficult to carve out an hour and a half or so to listen to archive training. Of course, our eyes scan the information much more quickly. I wanted to offer that as a resource if you look at the webinar archives page on HUD exchange. Additionally, the housing counseling agencies were provided with some social media materials, again, to get information out to consumers and target them and let them know that resources are available to them, if they are struggling during these COVID-19 filled days. So, one of the things that the office of housing counseling is seeking to do, and has been doing today is an example of that -- is working with other agencies across the board and local governments and nonprofit organizations. And we are also cross collaborating within HUD to make sure that we can get all the information that we can to our housing counselors so that they can let consumers know what aid and help is available to help them address their housing counseling needs. So while I am not an expert on the Wii details of the various programs, what I can say is that we have created a number of trainings, including one that took place on May 25th, just this past May that you will see in the archive section of high exchange webinar section, and it was a webinar that was presented by the HUD office of Public and Indian housing together with the community planning and development, CPD. Talking about emergency housing vouchers, that's what the training was. It went into more detail than I can go into with this presentation. The American rescue plan, 2021 appropriated $5 billion for emergency housing vouchers, and this is particularly relevant information for housing counselors who are supporting clients and trying to provide them with assistance for emergency rental assistance vouchers. And the targeted population here are homeless individuals, recently homeless, individuals who are at risk of homelessness, and those who are fleeing, attempting to flee violence, sexual assault, stalking, or humic -- Human trafficking. So generally, the office of housing counseling and HUD exchange provide more links to the programs specific details, and also the webinar, as I said. Same for the home investment partnership program and the monies appropriated for tenant-based rental assistance for up to 2 years. This is another resource in information that housing counselors can use to provide assistance to their consumers who are looking for rental help. And this next slide sort of summarizes who the target populations are, and goes over the eligibility being limited to individuals and families who meet these various criteria along with the website links to more information. Again, here are some more links for information about home grantees, the continuum of care, again, to assist individuals who are facing homelessness, racial equity, domestic violence, and as I mentioned before, this last bullet, 9902 impact data displays if you are looking for specific information related to geographic areas but also types of counseling. -- That have been provided. So housing counseling agencies, generally, they play a major role with communitywide assistance. We have seen it here with respect to COVID-19 and the struggles that homeowners and renters face. But they also really step up to provide assistance in emergency situations. If there is a disaster, and homeowners and renters need help that way, counselors set up blood drives, food banks, almost whatever is needed for their communities. And counseling after an emergency looks different than sort of the typical looking to buy a house or looking to rent an apartment or looking for financial counseling. It speaks to the depth and breath of what housing counselors offer. They need to really understand short-term and long-term goals that families and individuals have, and they have a wide network of resources for referral as well. So those are some of the areas that they are involved with, again, just getting you an overview of the value they bring. This last page is our resource page. I think this is where you get a lot of good information to refer back to, if an agency or organization is considering a counseling agency and joining our network, here is information on that, on finding a housing counseling agency as I mentioned before, consumers can search by ZIP Code or by city or the type of counseling service that they may need, and if you have questions after today or at any point, you can email the office of housing counseling at housing.counseling at HUD.gov. So thank you for your time and your attention and letting me share some of this information with you. I am now going to pass it to Jessica Russell. 
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Thank you so much, Stephanie. That was great information. I did let everyone know that we will be sharing the slide deck with everyone that put their email in the registration that is on this call. Thank you so much. It looks like Jessica is all set to go. So let's see -- let me move -- Robin, do you want to move the slides back to the main presentation for Jessica, or would you like me to? I will do it, I think -- hoops. 
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That looks like it. Thank you so much, Heather. 
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You are welcome. 
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Perfect. Excellent, thank you. As Heather said, my name is Jessica Russell. I am from the CFPB. Today, I have the pleasure to talk to you about some of the resources and protections available to homeowners and renters. I want to start today by thanking all of you on the call for attending, but also for the work you are doing to help consumers navigate the pandemic. So, just as a quick disclaimer, the information that I'm giving here today is not meant as legal advice. Any opinions I express -- so I don't think I have two -- this will come to a surprise as anyone on the call, but housing insecurity remains a critical challenge here in the pandemic. Certain legal protections are going to be expiring months ahead, over 8 million families are at risk of eviction or foreclosure. And black and Hispanic families are more than twice as likely to report being behind on housing payments as families and other statistics -- another 6.7 million tenant households are behind on rent. So we have a small window to help prevent millions of consumers from losing their homes, which, during a pandemic is so critical to prevent unlawful addiction and [ Indiscernible - low volume ]. And I will say that the good news is that there are protections and resources that exist for both homeowners and renters, but they aren't always automatic. And some consumers are aware of their rights or their options, so we are offering a variety of resources, and really welcome your help to get out the message and boost awareness of what health and resources and rights consumers have. And I will also just note, as we all know, there has been a differential impact by race and ethnicity. This chart shows census poll data where the bars represent the share of households who are behind on payments. Renters are on the left. Homeowners are in the middle. You can see quite clearly that the financial impacts from the pandemic have been particularly damaging among black, Hispanic and Asian households. The survey data also tells us that low income renters are more likely to be behind on rent, and black and Hispanic renters are more likely to report that they think they will be behind. So with that, let's start with homeowners, then we will talk about renters, then I will wrap up with additional resources. So am -- On the homeowners side, there are a number of protections available. The first is forbearance. This is a program that allows homeowners to temporarily pause their mortgage payments if they are affected by the pandemic. Millions of consumers have taken advantage of that. That has been sort of the primary way to assist homeowners -- assist consumers on the homeowners side. There are also foreclosure protections. Some of you may know this is a little esoteric. Some of you might know that the CFPB issued a final role recently. That establishes some temporary procedural safeguards. I will get more into what the rule does later on in the deck. That is also available. And then there are also homeowner assistance funds. This is different than the rental assistance that Vanessa was talking about earlier. This is about $10 billion that was authorized by Congress to provide consumers with assistance, mortgage payments, utility payments and other purposes. I am not going to get into that too much in detail here, but definitely expect to see more about that later on, I would say in the coming months. So let's talk about forbearance. As I said, that is the main program here. Many of you may be familiar with it. We want to point out that borrowers can still request COVID-19 hardship forbearance. For some loans, there is a September 30th deadline. If you haven't requested and needed, you should do it as soon as possible. It is not automatic. They have to contact a servicer to start it. Most are eligible. So if it is a government or GSE back loan, those are all eligible. Then even if it isn't, many of those loans will still be eligible because industry has sort of chosen to provide similar types of relief. Now when a borrower gets forbearance, the plan will typically start off with 3 to 6 months of payments that essentially get skipped, then the borrower can add additional extensions on top of that, maxing out usually around 12 or 18 months. -- Of payment relief. So this is a quick graph that shows how many people are in forbearance over time. The dark blue line at the top is the total number. Overall, 7 million homeowners have gotten forbearance since the beginning of the pandemic. A little less than 2 million are still in forbearance. Now that is going to be, those 2 million borrowers, a significant number of them will exit forbearance in fall of 2020, so just around the corner, so the big challenge will be getting them into sustainable options so they can get back on their feet. They generally have a couple different options. They can defer the payments, sometimes it is called a pressure plan. It can give them modification. They can do a payment plan. Not a lot of people are using those. Or they can pay it back in a lump sum. Initially there was a lot of confusion about this. People thought they had to pay a lump sum. So we want to make it clear that that is very rarely required. If a consumer only here's that as the only option, they should ask their servicer about what other options are available to them. I want to give a big shout out to Stephanie to talk about the HUD approved housing counseling. We definitely recommend that borrowers who are concerned about their home reach out to a HUD approved counseling agency and we have links on the website to help you find that. And just a reminder that borrowers don't always know that help is free. So please do remind them that they do not have to pay anyone to help them avoid foreclosure. That is a good way for them to avoid [ Indiscernible - low volume ]. I wanted to touch a little bit on a recent rule that the CFPB issued. So at the end of June, we finalized a rule that aims to facilitate a smooth transition as some of the federal foreclosure protections expire. So I just want to touch on it briefly. A couple things, all the amendments that are made in this rule are temporary. They do not apply to small servicers because we know that can be a burden for them and they need more flexibility. The rule takes effect at the end of the month. But servicers can certainly voluntarily comply with new requirements early, and in many cases, GSE loans are already required to follow these practices. So the rule has four main parts. I'm not going to go into a ton of detail, and I will probably focus more on the first part, but basically, four main parts, one, it provides these temporary procedural safeguards to help ensure that borrowers have a meaningful opportunity to be reviewed for mitigation before the servicer can make the first notice or filing required for foreclosure. And so, basically, so -- I will note that that only applies if the mortgage became 120 days -- more than 120 days late after March 1st of 2020, so when the pandemic started. If they were already 120 days late, these [ Indiscernible - low volume ]. But basically, what this does, it ensures before servicers proceed with foreclosure, they have done a few things. And so it kind of slows down the process a little bit. The next part of the rule provides -- temporarily allows streamlined modifications. This is to enable some of the streamlined options so when consumers are exiting forbearance, they are able to do so with less paperwork. And it does a couple things that are more technical. It expands some early intervention messages, and takes some due diligence timing that is optional and makes it -- [ Indiscernible - low volume ]. So the next thing I want to talk through is the CFPB's housing portal. It has been mentioned a couple times. So I wanted to really spend a lot of time on that because this is really the best resource we are providing for consumers. We want to make sure you all know the ins and outs of what is available on the portal. So this is available at consumer finance.gov/housing. It is nice and easy to remember. As you can see, it has information for homeowners, renters, and for landlords. So we are going to start by talking about the homeowners side. And here, as I said, because a lot of assistance on the homeowners side has been about forbearance, we have a whole bunch of resources that really walk borrowers through the steps of forbearance, learning about it, requesting forbearance, extending forbearance if necessary, and preparing to exit. We also, on all pages, encourage borrowers to get expert help. You do not have to face these things alone. There are people out there available to help you, housing counselors being one of them, and we remind people of that. We also remind people that if they have a complaint with their mortgage or forbearance plan to tell us, the CFPB about that through complaints, and that may help get an answer. And then we also have -- so I didn't have a slide on this, but we walk borrowers through each of the exit options. There is a video that explains how they all work in detail. There are expendables that show how to do that and then we also provide some information on how to avoid foreclosure because we know sometimes that that may be what it comes down to. Also, as sort of a side note, we do have information for reverse mortgage borrowers. That is a much smaller population than the general mortgage population, but an important one and a vulnerable one because it is -- yeah -- they are seniors -- so we have information specific to borrowers who have reverse mortgages and have fallen on hard times because of the [ Indiscernible - low volume ]. So those, that is a quick encapsulation of the resources we have on the homeowners side. Definitely check it out. Now let's turn to renters. We also have a lot of resources for them as [ Indiscernible - low volume ]. Again, these are all available at consumer finance.gov /[ Indiscernible - low volume ]. As I mentioned, renters have a number of resources and a variety of help that is available. This would include some of the eviction moratoriums , the emergency rental assistance which you heard all about from Vanessa and I will talk more about in just a bit. There is a CFPB debt collection rule which I won't get into too much here, but basically, if a debt collector -- excuse me -- harasses a consumer or makes false or misleading statements to collect on rental done -- debt, they may be breaking a federal law. There are details on our website. There are federal laws about housing discrimination and state and local tenant protections. So renters have a number of things available to them but they sometimes have to look a variety of places to get it and so we tried to pool all of those resources together so people could find it in a more organized [ Indiscernible - low volume ]. So for the housing portal, we cover many of the same topics on the last slide, but as I said, we try to organize the experience in a way that makes it easier for consumers to use and navigate. I don't think consumers are coming to the website thinking I need to learn about the CFPB debt collections rule but they are going to be thinking about -- you know -- somebody has sorta been harassing me about the debt collection, what should I do about that? And so we provide a number of step-by-step instructions for renters in a variety of situations they may be facing, so for example, we have writeups on avoiding eviction, getting rental assistance, talking to your landlord about repayment and some suggestions on how to have that conversation. We also have some good detailed information about what are your rights? Again, as we referenced on the slide, understanding what rights they have so they know sort of what is normal and what is not normal, what is okay, what is not okay and lastly, making sure consumers know that they are not alone in this. There is help available, there are housing counselors and others who can help them navigate their situation and get the help that they need. So, for example, here is the screenshot of our resources for renters explaining their rights, so as I said, it talks about the freedom from harassment and false or misleading statements by debt collector. It talks a little bit about some of the common state or local rights. It has specific provisions and discussion for rights of domestic violence -- sorry -- the rights for domestic violence survivors, and also a discussion to help consumers stay free from housing discrimination, which we are very focused on and we know that can be particularly painful issues for people at this [ Indiscernible - low volume ]. And then, so it is not just homeowners and renters. We also have some resources, as I said, for landlords. Landlords live in a space where maybe they have a mortgage. Some of the homeowner things apply to them but also, you know, maybe they are renting that out, so they want to understand more about the emergency rental assistance, so we have some information about that. We also provide some suggestions, you know, on how to have a conversation with their tenants. We provide the flipside of the script so people can help make those sort of meaningful, useful productive conversations because we know these are difficult conversations to have. 
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Hi, Jessica. This is Heather. I want you to know we are at 3:18. So we are going to try to get a few questions in between 3:20 and 3:25-ish. So yeah, thanks. 
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Great. So Vanessa already talked about the third rule on the emergency rental assistance, so I won't go into the details there. but the thing that I really want people to take away from that is, we have a rental assistance finder that we launched recently. It is incredibly popular. I want to walk people through quickly how it works so you can take advantage of it. It is available at consumer finance.gov/rental help or from the housing pages. So basically, you put in the state and the county, optionally, then we also have a slot for people to enter tribe or tribal areas. Then it pulls a list of the rental assistance programs that would be applicable. So it is a really great way for people to be able to quickly find what they need about having to scour the Internet, and that is from the Department of treasury who helped make this happen. So please take advantage of this as I said, many bars have done that already, but we encourage you to. I will just note that we have videos in English and Spanish. We have resources available in other languages. And we have a variety of other COVID-19 resources not just about housing but just about student loans and avoiding scams and things like that. And lastly, we have what we call a digital toolkit which includes email and social media handouts and things like that. Please use them liberally. We have developed them so they would get into the hands of practitioners. So, that wraps up my presentation. Thank you so much. I will turn the time back over to Heather. 
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Thank you so much, Jessica. Excellent presentation. You got through a lot of information quickly. I appreciate that. We did get several questions. So we are going to go back in the order of speakers to answer the questions. We will start with Vanessa. Vanessa, did you have a chance to review your questions? Are you ready to answer the ones you are able to? 
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Yeah, yeah. So I see there are questions about local programs and the different stages they are at. And that is definitely a reality of the program. Some grantees are ahead of the game in pushing money out the door, but no one is doing it as fast as they would like to with the situation at hand. And others are really far behind. Some of them have not taken advantage of some of the documentation Lex abilities the treasury has offered. Some have had local pickups -- hiccups in getting programs at the door because of local requirements and other sort of programs. So there is a lot of variety out there. because of the decentralized nature of this, the way you can help is by potentially engaging with local grantees and looking for ways that, if you have the ability to help educate -- help people with the right documentation to get them through the process, that can be a benefit worth exploring. I received a question about how you can look up AMI. I am going to put that link in the chat. That link to the AMI lookup tool is available on the CFPB's website about getting federal rent help. It is in the question, how do I know if I am eligible? So I will throw that in there. and there were questions about generally, the support has to go to renters. -- To help renters stay in housing. And the eligible costs have to be related to housing. So a grantee might decide to provide housing benefits for a specific population that might need help related -- so for instance, substance abuse or mental health issues, then eligible expenses have to do with housing. So I will pass it on to someone else. I think that covers that. 
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Thank you so much. Appreciate those answers. So Stephanie, I think you would be next. And you did get a few questions. Did you have a chance to review them, and are there some questions you'd like to answer? 
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I did. So someone was asking about what I meant when I referred to the continuum of care for homeless individuals. It is HUD's continuum of care program. 
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Okay. 
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And the efforts around assisting homeless individuals and families, to rehouse them, to provide them with access to services, and to promote self-sufficiency. So the continuum of care is actually one of HUD's programs. So I just wanted to clarify that. And then, someone else asked me about if I could repeat the house providing counselor housing, what the elements of a counseling session would be? So I will repeat them. They are intake, completing a sustainable budget, financial and housing affordability analysis, completing a client action plan that they will plan out and walk through as sort of a roadmap for what the assistance is, and then follow up with the client. Follow-up is important to make sure the client is coming along with meeting the milestones and overcoming any roadblocks to carrying out the action plan that they have outlined with the counselor. 
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Thank you. That is intake, budgeting, housing, affordability, analysis, planning/roadmap? 
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Client action plan, client action plan. 
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That's after the analysis? 
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Great. Okay, I think I got it in there. thank you. 
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Sure. 
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Any other questions you had to answer? 
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No. That was it. 
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Okay, great. That takes us back to Jessica. Jessica, where there are some questions you wanted to answer, or did you want to elaborate on anything you had to skip before we wrap up? 
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So I got one note about reverse mortgages, some are not realizing that is an option. So I would definitely recommend that people feel free to point consumers and others to the reverse mortgage payments and pages we have. If consumers are having difficulty and the servers are not responsive, definitely would suggest that people look into filing a consumer complaint. That can be a great way for consumers to ensure they get a written response from the servicer. It also provides visibility to the CFPB into what is happening. So when a consumer can files -- files a complaint with CFPB, we see with the consumer statement and the company response so that is a great way for us to monitor what is going on in the market and that is something we are [ Indiscernible - low volume ] doing. So I encourage you to take advantage of the resources. Let me check -- 
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Excellent. Sure. 
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I think those are the main ones. 
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While she's -- 
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If you have a question, feel free to re-ask it in the chat. 
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Okay. And we did get one question around CFPB's policy or stance on something. I have taken note of that. I sent that out already to some people on the team who could help answer it. I was hoping to hear something, so we will address that individually with that person. I want to give a special thank you to our speakers and our events team. You all made a wonderful presentation. There was a lot of information. I look forward to reviewing the recording myself, again, so I can answer more questions when people reach out to me. I would like to let everyone on the call know that if there are topics you are interested in or things that relate to the work that see if PD does, or you would be interested in learning about webinars, we have a good schedule for the next few months I am always opening to hearing about what help you may need so please feel free to send me an email. The box is the CFPB underscore FinEx, that is the third bullet down. I review things that come into that box. Okay, thank you everyone for joining. I appreciate you taking time for many things in the world that are pulling time attention and energy and staying focused on your field and what you need to know to serve your people. And -- I look forward to you all joining us perhaps next month on September 23rd, we are having a webinar called making ends meet. It is going to be our research office talking about some of the things that happened economically with individuals after the pandemic and to give us some trends. So I think you will enjoy that so stay tuned for an announcement. And if you don't have [ Inaudible - static ] the last bullet is our LinkedIn page. Request to join that if you are not a member. That's a LinkedIn group. I will let you join in. Then you can post onto that as well. Let's see, and the homeowner whose main income is rental as the tenants moved out without income and enable to apply from rent support -- is there any situation that the eligible owner is eligible for rental help? 
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It sounds to me like you're talking about a landlord and tenant situation. The tenant moves out, and for some reason, they don't get support. Can the landlord seek support? I think the answer is through the PPE, but does anyone on the call, does the panelist know the answer? If not, if you can send the answer or email, if you can send it to the same question email, I can get a good answer for you. 
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This was not entirely answering the question, but if the homeowner has a mortgage, they may be eligible for forbearance which would let them sort of postpone payments or skip payments for a while, but the eligibility may depend on the loan. That's not going to apply if they don't own it outright. That might be one option. 
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Okay. 
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Please send that question again to our email. I will send it to a couple people who I think can add to the answer as well. All right. Well thank you all. We look forward to seeing you next month, and have a great day. Take care. 
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