Atlanta Cites Progress With Grants Spending Despite Concerns From HIV/AIDS Housing Providers
The City of Atlanta is defending the progress it’s made in its Grants Department. That’s after concerns from providers that funding delays are holding up services, particularly in a housing program for people with HIV and AIDS.
In that program known as Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS, or HOPWA, the federal government gives millions of dollars to the city, which then distributes that money among providers in the region. Those organizations use the funding to help house people with the health condition.
But providers say they often don’t get money from the city until long after they pay for tenants’ housing. Reimbursements of hundreds of thousands of dollars can take the better part of a year.
In the Community Development and Human Services Committee meeting Tuesday, Councilmember Michael Julian Bond told the grants department that politicians, like himself, sometimes have to call the mayor’s office in order for providers to receive payment.
“I’m aware of two groups that had to have that happen,” Bond said. “And became over the weekend aware of another group that may fold their program because they can’t afford to continue to float their organization while they wait for the city of Atlanta to reimburse them.”
Despite these concerns, the grants department held to an optimistic line throughout the council committee. The message was that things are getting better despite longstanding issues with Atlanta’s reimbursement process.
Because of those issues, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has monitored the city’s grants department for more than a year. According to the new Grants Commissioner Deborah Lonon, that monitoring is nearly over.
She told councilmember Bond that the city is training new staff to move along reimbursements, which in the HOPWA program can often require thousands of pages.
“We have streamlined that process councilmember,” Lonon said. “Unfortunately it’s going to take some time for our project sponsors to feel the effects of that streamline.”
According to the city presentation, the grants department has more than a hundred million dollars that it still needs to send to providers. $73 million of that is for tenants with HIV and AIDS. In 2019, the city had to return $4.9 million in funding for the program because it did not allocate the money within the required three-year time period.
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