HUD announced this week that 18 PHAs have been selected for a new Asset Building cohort as part of an expansion of the Moving-to-Work (MTW) Demonstration Program. This new MTW cohort will evaluate asset-building activities that encourage assisted households to create and grow savings accounts and/or build credit through rent reporting. HUD will work with the 18 selected PHAs to discuss and develop these policies for evaluation and implementation.
The new cohort is a part of HUD s Bridging the Wealth Gap agenda, which emphasizes building assets through access to banking, increased savings, and credit score improvement. HUD began seeking applications for this new cohort in April 2022. PHAs with 6,000 or fewer combined public housing units and HCV units were eligible for selection. The 18 PHAs selected for this new cohort means HUD has added 87 PHAs to the MTW Program since January 2021, a marked increase for the program designed to give PHAs the freedom to design and test local strategies.