U.S. Department of the Treasury

September 2022 Quarterly HAF Data Demonstrate Increased Reach to Homeowners

February 10, 2023

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

(HAF) through September of 2022 show an acceleration of assistance to low-income and 

underserved homeowners across the country. As of September 30, HAF programs had assisted 

over 162,000 homeowners across the country, a 138% increase in the number of homeowners 

assisted as of June 2022. Total obligations and expenditures across the program also more than 

doubled from July through the end of September. Moreover, real-time dashboards published by 

many states show significant further acceleration in the final months of the year, which will be 

reflected in numbers to be released in the coming months that capture totals through December 

2022.

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. For example:

• The State of California HAF Program has focused its outreach on underserved 

communities through multilingual, culturally competent assistance resources. For 

instance, the HAF application is available in six languages and the program’s contact 

center – which has handled over 190,000 calls as of Jan. 1, 2023 – can provide 

assistance in more than 200 languages. The state has also worked to keep the application 

as streamlined as possible; if an applicant has the necessary documents ready, the state 

estimates that the application can be completed in less than 15 minutes. Due to these 

efforts, as of Jan. 1, 2023, 88% of applicants surveyed by the program (5,676 applicants)

reported that the application was easy to complete, and 91% said the documents were 

easy to upload.

• The State of Michigan’s HAF program, after conducting a systemwide assessment, 

realized it needed to increase the availability of customer service agents to help 

homeowners apply. To quickly increase staff capacity, the HAF Program contracted with 

the state’s 211 service to answer questions, fill out applications for those without internet 

access, provide status updates to applicants and refer homeowners to other services they 

need.
• The State of Nevada’s HAF Program uses a data-driven approach to recalibrate

program offerings based on the most common reasons for application denial, thereby 

continuously improving its application process and contacting denied applicants to 

inform them of other opportunities for assistance. Nevada’s Program also directly 

reached out to applicants who did not return to the website to complete their 

applications. These efforts, combined with increased marketing, resulted in a 300% 

increase in households assisted over a three-month period (July through September 

2022). 

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 30% 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 September 30, 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 assistance was delivered to very low-income homeowners (those earning 

50% of area median income and below);

• 35% of HAF homeowners self-identified as Black and 20% self-identified as Latino; and 

• 64% 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 September 30, 2022 is available here.