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HCHA meeting September 7, 2021 <br />with rent but it's actually to address both rent as well as utilities. This is a federally <br />funded program, Hawaii County was very fortunate that it received a direct <br />allocation from the U.S. Department of Treasury. Hawai `i County as well as the <br />City and County of Honolulu were the only two counties that received a direct <br />outside of the State's allocation, so Maui, Kauai is in a sub -award agreement <br />with the State, so we got a little over 12.8 million dollars directly from the Treasury <br />and then through a State sub -award agreement, the State gave us an <br />additional 6.1 million, so for this program only we have 18.9 million dollars to <br />spend. We implemented the program in April of this year and Jeff will share <br />more in detail but I think what highlights our implementation is the method in <br />which Hawaii Community Lending has implemented the program here on <br />Hawai `i Island in working together with various non -profits to do it. There's lots of, <br />this is our second round so in August in 2020 we launched the first rent and <br />mortgage assistance program and there were lots lessons learned there and so <br />we issued the RFP we incorporated those into it making it a much more effective <br />and efficient way to bring up services. So I just wanted to confirm, Jeff, are you <br />with us? <br />Gilbreth: Yes, I'm here Sharon. <br />Hirota: I'll let you take over from here. <br />Gilbreth: Mahalo, Sharon and mahalo Council Members, it's so great to be here <br />with you and presenting on this program. So Sharon has shared with you folks <br />this partnership is unlike any other in the State of Hawai `i for the emergency <br />rental assistance. There's seven on island, non -profits that are working in the <br />trenches processing applications, paying out funds which we found is a strategy <br />to make sure there is no bottle neck in terms of dollars getting out, the doors of <br />the program have (inaudible) non-profit administering, we have six that are <br />cutting checks which means we have six back offices able to wire funds, cut <br />checks, right there on island. We're using the single data management <br />database called STREAK that's being managed by Neighborhood Place of <br />Puna and all of our partners are putting data into that system to make sure there <br />is no duplication of financial support. Going all the way back to March 2020 <br />including other programs that have been administered even by other agencies <br />that aren't on our team at this point. The funds themselves, there has been a lot <br />of, as I'm sure you folks have seen, lot of changes to the program federally and I <br />think the federal government experienced that we've had is this that <br />administration came in an wrote rules very quickly on the funding in comparison <br />to the previous administration where there wasn't a lot of guidance and so with <br />that guidance they're pretty restrictive at the beginning and we've now seen <br />the program open up because we're hearing from the federal government they <br />want to see dollars spent at the jurisdiction level, the reality is, is that the <br />program needed to be more flexible to meet the needs of local families and so <br />Page 20 of 34 <br />