STRMU assistance can be provided for up to 21 weeks' worth of mortgage, rent, and utility payments within a given 52-week period.
The 52-week period can be defined in a number of ways, including based on a calendar year, based on an organization's grant or operating year,
or based on a 12-month period unique to each participant (based, say, on the start date of STRMU assistance). STRMU assistance
is often provided for more than one type of payment at a time - rent AND utilities payments, for example. If unpaid rent or utilities payments
are involved for two separate payment types, then care needs to be taken in calculating the 21 weeks of available assistance. The 21 weeks are cumulative,
meaning that it will include the total time periods being paid, both backwards and forwards. For example, say that a client is being approved
for STRMU assistance on September 1st. They face a utilities shut-off for two months' unpaid gas heat costs in January and
February of the same year. They also have three months' worth of unpaid rent for May, June, and July of the same year.
In this case, this adds up to 21 and a half weeks worth of unpaid bills. One of the bills will have to be pro-rated and only partially paid,
to account for the extra half a week beyond the 21-week limit. And the household would not be eligible for any "forward"
or ongoing assistance. If the utilities and rent periods had overlapped, however, the equation would look different.
Grantees and sponsors who administer STRMU should review and be familiar with the detailed guidance provided in the STRMU
resource issued by HUD. Grantees and sponsors should have policies and procedures in place that specify how they define the
52-week period of assistance. Finally, many grantees and sponsors will have caps on assistance. A community may use the local
Public Housing Authority Housing Choice Voucher Program (HCVP) payment standards as the capped payment amount.
They may also place a limit on the total dollar amount of funding a client is eligible to receive, or the number of times in the 52-week period
a client may apply for assistance. In establishing a capped amount, grantees must assess the area's Fair Market Rent, rent reasonableness,
and/or other measures of the area's housing market. The goal of this assessment is to ensure that the level of support allowed is sufficient
to avoid an ongoing household housing crisis. If caps on the allowable amount of STRMU assistance are established,
the use of these caps must be applied in a uniform, consistent, and non-discriminatory manner by a grantee and all of its funded project sponsors.
In the case that a household receives the maximum capped STRMU assistance amount, HUD will consider the assistance
to have been attributable to the entire 21-week period allowed by the regulations. For monitoring, look for policies and procedures
that detail how time limits will be calculated and, if appropriate, describe any additional limits on assistance. Review files to see if time limits
and caps were uniformly calculated and applied. Look for clear documentation of 21-week time limit calculation in participant files.