U.S. Department of the Treasury 

December 2022 Quarterly HAF Data Demonstrate Increased Reach to Homeowners 

April 7, 2023 

Participant-reported data for the American Rescue Plan-funded Homeowner Assistance Fund 

(HAF) through December of 2022 continue to show an acceleration of assistance to low-income 

and underserved homeowners across the country. As of December 31st, HAF programs had 

assisted over 241,000 homeowners across the country, a 49% increase in the number of 

homeowners assisted since the previous quarter ending September 30, 2022. Total obligations 

and expenditures across the HAF program increased by 165% and 287%, respectively, between 

the second quarter and the fourth quarter of 2022. In addition, the real-time public dashboards 

that many states maintain to track their HAF programs continue to show rapid growth beyond 

December 31, 2022 that is not captured in this Q4 dataset. 

States, U.S. territories, and Tribes participating in HAF are providing assistance in a number of 

innovative ways that help ensure homeowners facing pandemic-related financial hardship receive 

timely assistance. HAF programs are building awareness through strategic outreach to increase 

access among homeowners, especially for socially disadvantaged individuals and those who need 

reasonable accommodations. HAF programs across the country reduced applicants’ barriers to 

assistance by increasing customer service options, expanding program offerings, and fine-tuning 

administrative processes to increase efficiency. The HAF Program continues to empower 

homeowners with the tools and resources needed to remain in their homes with many programs 

making key improvements to scale up their operations. For example: 

 The State of North Carolina’s HAF program streamlined its procedures to expedite 

payment processing to quickly get aid into the hands of homeowners who needed it the 

most. Initially, once a homeowner’s award was calculated, the program would issue an 

Assistance Agreement and require the homeowner to sign and return before it could 

process a payment. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the program eliminated the need for a 

signature and now issues the homeowner an Award Letter. HAF funds are obligated at 

the time the Award Letter is generated, and the program can move to payment processing 

without having to wait for the homeowner to return the signed form.

 The State of Indiana's HAF program has made changes to its processes and procedures 

to more quickly identify homeowners eligible for and in need of aid. These changes 

include adjusting the application process for determining financial hardship, allowing 

households to provide a reasonable fact-specific proxy for household income, and 

updating servicer communication processes to reduce errors and resolve issues quickly. 
 The State of Connecticut’s HAF program more than quadrupled the number of 

homeowners assisted and funds disbursed in the last three months of 2022 by 

streamlining procedures and significantly reducing processing time. 

Though many HAF programs have made significant progress, Treasury is continuing to closely 

monitor recipients who have been slower in implementing aid and publishing data to ensure 

accountability for state and territorial recipients of HAF funds. Treasury continues to urge 

recipients to examine areas for improvement, including through the adoption of promising 

practices highlighted on the Treasury website and in communications with program staff. 

HAF was designed to support homeowners experiencing financial hardship, working in 

conjunction with a range of other foreclosure prevention initiatives implemented by the BidenHarris Administration that has resulted in historically low foreclosure filings. According to Black 

Knight data, foreclosure starts remain 19% below pre-pandemic levels. After a planning process 

during which Treasury required states, territories, and Tribes to inform their plans with data and 

community input, HAF programs began providing assistance in the first half of 2022 as other 

foreclosure protections wound down. HAF programs across the country are assisting 

homeowners both by providing direct assistance and by helping homeowners access relief 

through their mortgage servicers, including loss mitigation on government-backed loans. 

Treasury has taken numerous actions to ensure that HAF empowers states, territories, and Tribal 

governments to reach the most vulnerable homeowners, including requiring participants to 

structure and target assistance based on data-driven assessments of homeowner needs, with an 

emphasis on data that identifies disparate hardships across demographic groups. Reporting 

through December 31, 2022 shows that HAF assistance is reaching a much broader range of 

economically vulnerable and traditionally underserved homeowners than prior federal mortgage 

assistance and foreclosure prevention programs: 

Excluding omitted data or data not reported, 

 57% of HAF applications approved for assistance were to very low-income homeowners 

(those earning half the area median income and below); 

 39% of HAF homeowners self-identified as Black and 20% self-identified as Latino; and 

 65% of HAF beneficiaries were female. 

As rising interest rates further strain housing affordability, particularly for homeowners with 

lower incomes, HAF funds continue to serve as a crucial resource to assist in resolving 

delinquency, providing mortgage payment assistance, and addressing other threats to housing 

stability. HAF participants have until September 30, 2026 to use their funds to assist 

homeowners in their communities. 

HAF is an important part of a broader Biden-Harris administration effort to help struggling 

borrowers across the country remain in their homes. The Biden-Harris administration has 

engaged a series of measures that protected homeowners from foreclosure, including a 
foreclosure moratorium, increased options for mortgage payment forbearance, and enhanced loan 

modifications to resolve delinquencies, among other initiatives that have together helped keep 

mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures below pre-pandemic levels. 

A summary of Quarterly HAF participant data through December 31, 2022 is available here.