Pandemic Emergency Rental Assistance
Fayetteville Housing Authority Consulting Contract
Washington County received $7.5M of federal funding for pandemic-related emergency rental assistance and awarded $1.5M each to the Springdale & Fayetteville Housing Authority for distribution.
FHA had thousands of applications to process in accordance with Department of Treasury guidelines in a matter of weeks.
I developed FHA's application scoring system to maximize the impact and keep people in their homes.
Different agencies pursued different strategies:
Springdale Housing Authority took a first-come/first-served approach, paying eligible applicants until funds were exhausted.
Fayetteville Housing Authority opted for an application window and scoring system to ensure applicants with limited internet access, ineffective outreach, or uncooperative landlords would not miss out due to access challenges.
FHA contracted me to consult on the tabulation and scoring of applications. We discussed the criteria they wanted to prioritize - children in the home, elderly or disabled, etc. - in addition to household income. I developed several sample applicant profiles to test weighting algorithms and ensure the results matched their policy objectives.
Using text processing functions of Google Sheets, I automated basic completeness and logical integrity checks on the records, flagging applications for staff to target with their outreach efforts.
I prepared summary statistics for agency leadership for their reports to their board of commissioners and to the Washington County Quorum Court, and accompanied them to their presentations to answer unanticipated questions from elected officials.
Preventing homelessness by ensuring efficient and equitable
distribution of public funds.
distribution of public funds.
Key Project Features:
Record-matching between two different data sets from a two-part application
Automated quality assurance checks flag incomplete and inconsistent applications for staff-followup
Lossless data overrides preserve original application submissions for historical review
Configurable scoring weights allow administrators to adjust prioritization categories as federal guidelines change
Live analytics allow real-time reporting of funds dismemberment and recipient demographics to elected stakeholders
Multi-user environment allowed a team-approach to work on all stages of the process simultaneously
