Explanation
BACKGROUND: This legislation authorizes the Director of the Department of Development to execute a subrecipient agreement with Greenwood 360 LLC in an amount up to $1,750,000.00 of U.S. Department of Treasury Emergency Rental Assistance 2 (ERA 2) funds to act as the Application Manager for recipients as part of the department’s ERA 2 Investment Strategy, to authorize an agreement start date of June 1, 2023, and to waive the competitive bidding requirements in Columbus City Code Chapter 329.
Ordinance 2275-2021 authorizes the City of Columbus to accept and appropriate up to $90,537,806.23 of federal Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA 2) program funds, as passed by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021.
The City has disbursed approximately $23 million of the $90.5 million of ERA 2 funds received from the U.S. Department of Treasury as a result of the COVID-19 emergency. This is in addition to the $38.3 million of ERA 1 funds disbursed. The remaining $67.5 million of ERA 2 funds will be disbursed under two programs: Investment Strategy and Innovations Strategy.
The department’s ERA 2 Investment Strategy Program will require a number of agreements/contracts with various entities and legislation will come before City Council as the agreements/contracts are needed. Similar to how prior ERA funds were contracted/expended, the department shall work with various non-profit agencies to inform the public that these funds are available and the non-profit agencies will provide intake/application services. There are other entities involved that will provide “operation services” (web site hosting, eligibility determination, monitoring, fraud investigation, software platform, etc.) as well. The U.S. Department of Treasury has encouraged jurisdictions to look at ways to expedite payments by centralizing application intake processing as one of their best practices.
Of the $67.5 million available, $1,750,000.00 will be used for a subrecipient agreement...
Click here for full text