1505-0270 - ERA2 SS - Renewal

Department of the Treasury

Information Collection Request – Supporting Statement

Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERA2)

OMB No. 1505-0270

Part A. Justification

1. Circumstances necessitating the collection of information

On March 11, 2021, the President signed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (the “Act”), Pub. L. No. 117-2. Title III, Subtitle B, Section 3201 of the Act authorized the Emergency Assistance (ERA 2) program and provides $21.55 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), 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, and cover the costs for other affordable rental housing and eviction prevention activities for eligible households.

Acceptance of Award Terms Form

An eligible grantee that elects to receive payment under the Emergency Rental Assistance program must complete and sign a form that will indicate its agreement to the award terms, including, most importantly the requirement set forth in section 3201(e) for Treasury to reallocate funds not yet paid beginning on March 31, 2022. Treasury does not have rulemaking authority with respect to this program, so it must obtain the agreement of eligible grantees to require them to comply with these provisions.

Recipient Payment Information Form

In order to ensure proper payment by Treasury, each eligible grantee must supply basic identifying and bank routing information. This information should be readily available to officials completing the form.

Assurances of Compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

As a condition of receipt of federal financial assistance from Treasury, eligible grantees under the ERA 2 program are required to provide assurances pursuant to 31 C.F.R. § 22.5 that they will comply with the requirements of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Treasury’s Title VI implementing regulations.

ERA Interim Report and Interim Reporting Guidance

 

Treasury developed brief (two-question) ERA 2 monthly reports and the accompanying reporting guidance to enable ERA 2 grantees submit summary information on their utilization of ERA award funds monthly. This reporting will facilitate Treasury’s obligations to effectively monitor the ERA 2 grantees’ compliance with the requirements of the ERA 2 award.

ERA 2 Quarterly Reports, Bulk Upload Template, Instructions, and Treasury’s Portal User Guide

Treasury developed ERA 2 quarterly report forms, the accompanying bulk upload templates, and instructions to enable ERA 2 grantees to submit the required information on their utilization of ERA 2 award funds quarterly. This information can be submitted electronically via Treasury’s portal. Treasury has developed a guide to using the portal for grantees. The information collection is important and will permit Treasury to effectively monitor the ERA 2 grantees’ compliance with the requirements of the ERA2 award.

ERA 2 Additional Funds Request Form

Under Section 3201(c) of the Act, Treasury was directed to deliver each grantee an initial payment equal to 40% of its allocation and deliver the remainder in tranches. In order to request funds from their remaining allocations, ERA 2 grantees must demonstrate that at least 75% of their earlier payments have been spent or obligated for expenditure. To ease administrative burdens for eligible grantees while ensuring compliance with these requirements, Treasury has developed a standard funding request form. The form requires eligible grantees to disclose the amount of funds already spent or obligated, state the requested payment amount, and confirm the grantee’s compliance with program requirements.

2. Use of the data

The information reported will allow Treasury to ensure proper payments to the eligible grantees. The information reported in the ERA 2 Quarterly reports will allow Treasury to monitor the recipients’ compliance with the program requirements and provide Treasury with a better understanding of the recipients’ ERA program activity. 

3. Use of information technology

Treasury will manage the submission process with the use of existing and widely available technology such as a web portal and e-mail.

4. Efforts to identify duplication

The information collections are under new statutory mandates. The information is not known to overlap with any other data collected under any other information collections at Treasury. Furthermore, the information collection is tailored to leverage data that already exists and require only additional data that is necessary.

5. Impact on small entities

The collection of information will not directly affect small entities as they were not eligible under the statute.

6. Consequences of less frequent collection and obstacles to burden reduction

Treasury will collect only the information required to make any payments to the eligible grantees. The eligible grantees will submit a limited amount of information that should be readily available to the entity in the ordinary course of business. If the eligible grantees are unable to provide their completed recipient payment information form, acceptance of award terms form, and additional funds request, Treasury would not be able to make payment to those eligible grantees. 

If ERA2 grantees fail to complete and submit the brief monthly reports to Treasury, Treasury will be less able to meet its requirements to monitor ERA 2 grantees’ compliance with the ERA 2 program requirements. Likewise, if ERA 2 grantees fail to complete and submit their quarterly reports to Treasury, Treasury will not be able to effectively monitor each ERA 2 grantee’s compliance with the ERA 2 program requirements.

7. Circumstances requiring special information collection

There are no special circumstances that require the collection to be conducted in a manner inconsistent with OMB guidelines.

8. Solicitation of comments on information collection and justification for expedited processing pursuant to 5 C.F.R. § 1320.13

On August 12, 2021, Treasury published a notice in the Federal Register at 86 FR 44478, soliciting public review and comment for a 60-day period.

Treasury received 1 comment from an Independent Living Specialist who represents North Central Independ Living Solutions, Inc., in Black Eagle, Montana. She thanked Treasury for the guidance on HAF and ERA and noted that the emergency rental assistance will be important to ensuring that many people with disabilities are able to live independently in their homes and communities. The commentor requested that when developing pay back options for HAF or ERA financial assistance, Treasury and other Federal Agencies consider strategies similar to “cost share, incurrments, and spend downs,” which are commonly used methods when determining payment “pay back scheduling,” in the context of other benefit programs. The commentor recommended using prorated repayment based on current employment and benefits. Additionally, the commentor noted that obtaining benefit paperwork is difficult while Federal and State Agencies are working remotely.

Treasury would like to thank the commentor for these thoughtful insights. All financial assistance provided to tenants through the Treasury-administered Emergency Rental Assistance program (ERA 2) is in the form of grants to participant households. As such, participant households are not required to repay any portion of any financial assistance lawfully received through the Emergency Rental Assistance program. Therefore, Treasury does not anticipate a need to develop pay back scheduling related to ERA financial assistance.

9. Provision of payments to respondents

No payments or gifts are provided to respondents.

10. Assurance of confidentiality

Information collected will be kept confidential to the extent appropriate and consistent with the Freedom of Information Act and other applicable laws.

11. Justification of sensitive questions

No sensitive questions will be asked of eligible grantees.

12. Estimate of the hour burden of information collection.

The Recipient Payment Information form, Acceptance of Award Terms form, Title VI Assurances, Monthly Report, ERA 2 Quarterly Report, and Additional Funds Request Form burden estimates are as follows:

Reporting	# Respondents	# Responses Per Respondent	Total Responses	Hours per response	Total Burden in Hours	Cost to Respondent ($47.50 per hour*)
Acceptance of Award Terms Form	482	1	482	0.25 (15 minutes)	121	$5,748
Recipient Payment Information Form	482	1	482	0.25 (15 minutes)	121	$5,748
Title VI Assurances	482	1	482	.50 (30 minutes	241	$11,448
ERA2 Monthly Report	376	3	1128	1	1,128	$53,580
ERA2 Quarterly Report	376	4	1,504	30	45,120	$2,143,200
ERA2 Additional Funds Request Form	482	1	482	0.50 (30 minutes)	241	$11,448
Total	2,680		4,560		46,973	$2,231,172

* Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Accountants and Auditors, on the Internet at https://www.bls.gov/ooh/business-and-financial/accountants-and-auditors.htm (visited December 30, 2020). In 2019, the median pay for accounts and auditors was $34.40/hour. To account for the fully-loaded employer cost of employee compensation, the median pay is increased by 38%, resulting in a fully-loaded wage rate of $47.50. According to BLS’s Employer Cost for Employee Compensation from September 2020 (released on December 17, 2020: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf), employers provided 38% of total employee compensation in the form of non-wage compensation (i.e., benefits such as paid leave, health insurance, etc.) for state and local government workers.

13. Estimated total annual cost burden to respondents  

There are no annualized capital/startup costs for the eligible recipients to provide the information in the form or certification.

14. Estimated cost to the federal government.

There will be no annualized capital/start-up costs for the government to receive this information. The below table reflects the estimated time for a GS-13, Step 1 to review the information collected.

Collection Instrument	Number of Responses	Average Review Time per Response (in hours)	Total Time to Review (in hours)	Average Hourly Wage Rate1	Total Annual Government Cost
Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERA 2) Acceptance of Award Terms, Payment Information, Title VI Assurances, Reporting, and Additional Funds Forms	2,680	40	107,200	$49.68	$5,325,696
Total	2,680		107,200		$5,325,696

15. Reasons for change in burden

This submission is to renewal the OMB approval. There are no changes to the forms.

16. Plans for tabulation, statistical analysis and publication

Treasury plans to publish the data for disbursements.

17. Display of the expiration date for OMB approval

Treasury plans to display the expiration date for OMB approval of the information collection on all instruments.

18. Exceptions to submission requirements

There are no exceptions to the submission requirements.

Part B. Describe the use of statistical methods such as sampling or imputation.

This collection does not employ statistical methods.

1GS-13 wage rate from the 2021 GS-pay scale table for Washington-Baltimore-Arlington, DC-MD-VA-WV-PA, https://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/pay-leave/salaries-wages/salary-tables/pdf/2021/DCB_h.pdf ,