photo by: Mike Yoder/Journal-World File Photo
Houses in a neighborhood just west of downtown Lawrence are shown in this file photo from November 2011.
A Kansas Housing Resources Corporation assistance program funded by COVID-19 pandemic relief dollars has officially drawn to a close after providing Douglas County households nearly $2 million in aid.
As the Journal-World reported, the corporation’s Kansas Homeowner Assistance Fund — which was launched in April 2022 to help qualifying Kansas homeowners catch up on mortgage payments and avoid foreclosure — entered a “hold” phase near the beginning of this year and new applications were winding down.
Last Friday, the KHRC announced that it has stopped accepting new applications for the fund altogether. This program, like many others from the past several years, was funded with American Rescue Plan Act dollars.
The Kansas Homeowner Assistance Fund closes after distributing nearly $49 million in assistance to 4,300 homeowners across the state. According to the KHRC, aid was distributed to 98 of the 105 counties in Kansas, and 93% of the homeowners assisted were below 100% of their area’s median income.
In Douglas County, that includes 164 homeowners who had received a combined $1,977,810 in aid through the program as of Dec. 7. Roughly three-fourths of the 226 applications submitted by Douglas County residents were ultimately approved.
Though the program is now in its closure phase and has halted accepting new applications, the KHRC has accounted for approved forward mortgage payments that will be paid as scheduled. Fund applicants can still log in to the Kansas Homeowner Assistance Fund portal to monitor those scheduled payments.
