Overview: Chad Porter, CPA, CFE provides details on the latest HUD self-funding program, Moving to Work, and it’s flexible spending initiatives.

In recent news, HUD has stepped things up a notch with it’s recent self-funding program concept, Moving to Work. With this program, Housing Authorities will have more spending flexibility thanks to this new funding concept.

Let’s consider 3 things:

• What Moving to Work is and its purpose;
• Potential risk factors; and
• What we can conclude about the MTW demonstration program.

What is Moving to Work and its purpose

Moving to Work is a demonstration program for public housing authorities (PHAs). It provides PHAs with the opportunity to design and test innovative, locally designed strategies that:

• Use Federal dollars more efficiently
• Help residents find employment and become self-sufficient and
• Increase housing choices for low-income families.

The program combines several programs together to give Housing Authorities more flexibility in using those funds. We can say Moving to Work is HUD’s conglomerate program initiative — the basic concept is that all these funding streams/programs are combined into one federal program.

The programs include the Public Housing, Capital Fund, and Housing Choice Voucher programs. This one federal program (Moving to Work) will then self-fund the Public Housing, Capital Fund, and Housing Choice Voucher programs needs — as the Housing Authority sees fit. This sounds great, right?

Related article(s): Moving to Work (MTW) Demonstration Program

Potential risk factors

PHAs in the MTW demonstration have pioneered a number of innovative policy interventions that have been proven to be successful at the local level, and subsequently rolled out to the rest of the country’s PHAs. However, while it is great and does allow flexibility, the MTW demonstration program does come with a price tag: The accounting for this new funding method is quite intense.

Our very own Chad Porter recently joined in a webinar with Jesse Diaz, the Finance Manager at the Housing Authority of the County of San Bernardino (HACSB). Daiz oversees all HACSB’s accounting and financial activity which includes Moving to Work activities.

The webinar thus focused on discussing potential areas of concern and best practices regarding how to manage the intense MTW accounting and financial activities. The discussion included:

– What Moving to Work will do for your accounting

– How will MTW affect your single audit

– Things we wish we would’ve known about accounting and MTW

In conclusion:

Moving to Work is the new thing this year from HUD! And it’s been recently announced that the first 41 agencies, representing communities across the nation, have been selected for the expansion of the MTW Demonstration Program; there are about 100 agencies converting to join these agencies.

If you are interested in attending the next session or would like to set up a MTW consulting call, contact Hannah Baldwin at hbaldwin@smco.cpa.

Chad Porter, CPA, CFE

CEO

Smith Marion & Co.