Emergency Memo - ERA Grantee Survey

DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
WASHINGTON, D.C. 20220

TO:

Alex Goodenough, Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

FROM:

Ryan Law, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Privacy, Transparency, and Records

SUBJECT:

Justification for Emergency Processing: Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA)
Program Grantee Survey

Pursuant to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) procedures established at 5 C.F.R. §
1320.13, the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) requests emergency processing for an
Emergency Rental Assistance program information collection request.
On December 27, 2020, the President signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (the
“Act”). Division N, Title V, Section 501(a)(1) of the Act provides $25 billion for the U.S.
Department of the Treasury (Treasury) to make payments to States (defined to include the
District of Columbia), U.S. Territories (Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, Northern
Mariana Islands, and American Samoa), Indian tribes or tribally designated housing entities, as
applicable, the Department of Hawaiian Homelands, and certain local governments with more
than 200,000 residents (collectively the “eligible grantees”) to provide financial assistance and
housing stability services to eligible households.
Treasury is seeking approval for a one-time brief online survey of ERA grantees to capture
summary information on the utilization of federal ERA grant assistance to date in order to
understand the pace and characteristics at the local level. The survey seeks information on
grantee’s current and planned rental assistance programming, plans for launching their ERA
program, program activities to date, and their preferences regarding technical assistance to be
provided by Treasury.
Due to the need to gather important grantee-level program information to help inform our
reporting process and the types of assistance Treasury may provide to the grantee in
implementing their project, Treasury requests emergency processing and approval on March 15,
2021 to be able to make the survey available online for grantees on March 16. Given the
inability to seek public comment during such a short timeframe, Treasury requests a waiver from
the requirement to publish notice in the Federal Register seeking public comment.