BY JOE DORMAN

OKLAHOMA CITY – With the end of summer, we are getting close to the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy’s Fall Forum.

This conference, to be held Oct. 11-13 at MetroTech in Oklahoma City, will assemble experts from various fields to visit with attendees about ways to improve the lives of children and families in Oklahoma through policy work.

The theme this year will be “The Economy our Children Deserve.”

We will discuss many issues facing Oklahomans struggling to make ends meet.

We hope to shape a legislative agenda which will be presented to policymakers at the local, state and federal levels which offer workable solutions in 2023.

To attend Fall Forum and help us create “The Economy Our Children Deserve,” you can register on our website at https://oica.org under “Events.”

We will examine issues involving home ownership and rental affordability.

Through our research, we discovered a program to help Oklahomans who qualify and are struggling to make ends meet.

The Oklahoma Homeowner Assistance Fund (HAF) is available from the American Rescue Plan Act. HAF provides financial assistance to homeowners who have experienced a significant financial hardship due to COVID-19.

Eligible expenses HAF funds can cover include mortgage reinstatement, principal reduction, payment toward a partial claim or deferral, delinquent real estate taxes, restoration of homeowner’s insurance and delinquent homeowners’ association dues.

To be eligible, applicants can earn as much as $79,900 annually singleperson family and must meet all of the following criteria:

• Oklahoma homeowners must occupy the property as their primary residence.

• Homeowners must have experienced a COVID-19 qualified financial hardship after January 21, 2020.

• Homeowners must be 30 days delinquent, in a forbearance plan, or entering or completed a loan modification including a partial claim or deferral mortgage amount, to mitigate the COVID-related delinquency.

Homeowners who have completed a loan modification due to COVIDrelated delinquency may be eligible to receive a principal reduction. They must be United States citizens or those who can show proof of a green card.

Homeowners who are delinquent on eligible expenses, including:

• Reinstatement of delinquent mortgage, • Mortgage payment assistance for reinstated homeowners,

• Delinquent property tax,

• Restoring canceled homeowner’s insurance, and/or delinquent homeowners’ association dues.

• Be at or below 100% of the Area Median Income or homeowners who are socially disadvantaged and are at or below 150% of the Area Median Income.

Eligible mortgages must be secured by an instrument of government or government-sponsored entity or financed by a nonprofit, bank, credit union, or mortgage company that adheres to the widely accepted mortgage lending and mortgage servicing practices monitored by the Consumer Federal Protection Bureau or a builder-financed mortgage loan or manufactured home retail financing entity.

Excluded mortgages include sellerfinanced transactions, rent-to-own transactions, and family-financed transactions.

For Oklahoma residents, homeowners who are socially disadvantaged may qualify if they are at or below 150% of the Area Median Income; that ranges from $79,900 for a one-person family up to $109,800 for a four-person family.

It goes as high as $144,950 for an eight-person family. Socially disadvantaged indicators include residents of a Native American reservation, which would include much of the state based upon recent court rulings.

This also includes individuals who lives in a persistent poverty county, meaning any county that has had 20% or more of its population living in poverty over the past 30 years as measured by the three most recent decennial censuses.

Those counties include Adair, Caddo, Cherokee, Choctaw, Greer, Harmon, Haskell, Hughes, Johnston, McCurtain, Okfuskee, Payne, Pushmataha, Seminole, Sequoyah and Tillman counties.

If you think that you might qualify, visit with your lender holding your mortgage and go to https://www.ohfa.org/haf/ to review and submit the application.