Final - Appendix G.2 - Round 2 Interviews Guide_Grantees and Subrecipients

Evaluation of the Eviction Protection Grant Program

DATA COLLECTION INSTRUMENTS | Contract #: 86614922C00007

Round 2 Semi-Structured Interviews - Grantees and Subrecipients

PRA Burden Statement: ­Public Reporting Burden for this information collection is estimated to average 60 minutes, including the time to administer informed consent. The collection is designed to gather information from grantees and subrecipients regarding their overall experiences with the Eviction Protection Grant Program.

Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions to reduce this burden, to Anna P. Guido, Reports Management Officer, REE, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 451 7th Street SW, Room 8210, Washington, DC 20410–5000. When providing comments, please refer to OMB Control No. 2528–XXXX. HUD may not conduct and sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless the collection displays a valid OMB Control Number.

Introduction

Interviewer: Thank you for agreeing to participate in this interview. My name is __________, and I am a researcher with 2M Research (2M), the policy research firm contracted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for this study.

I will start by briefly introducing the study, obtaining your consent, and making sure we cover any questions you might have before we begin the interview.

The purpose of this study is to learn more about how <grantee/subrecipient name> is implementing the HUD Eviction Protection Grant Program. We are speaking with all grantees, selected grant subrecipients, and program participants to:

• Understand successful approaches grantees use to provide services to clients.

• Understand the challenges grantees faced during program implementation and their subsequent solutions to address these challenges.

• Learn more about the characteristics of grantees and other stakeholders, such as service providers.

• Document the services offered and client take-up, types of clients served, and program outcomes.

This information will be used to understand your overall experience with the Eviction Protection Grant Program.

Permission to Record

Before we begin, we would like to have your permission to record the audio and video of our discussion to ensure our notes are accurate and complete. The recordings will be deleted once the project is complete.

Can we record this conversation?

□ Yes

□ No

• If interviewee(s) agree(s) to be recorded:

  • Thanks. Now, we are going to turn on the recorder (TURN ON RECORDER).

• If interviewee(s) decline(s):

  • Okay, that is not a problem.

Informed Consent

During this interview, we would like to discuss your experience with the Eviction Protection Grant Program, the services provided, successes or challenges, and any lessons learned. Our discussion should last approximately 60 minutes. There are no right or wrong answers. You can refuse to answer any questions that you do not wish to answer.

Everything you tell us is confidential and will be kept private. The information collected by the study team will be mostly aggregated for reporting purposes to HUD. Interesting quotes, however, may be included in the report mainly to illustrate a point. These quotes will be untraceable to the speaker. Instead, we will use pseudonyms to represent speakers. All analyses will be conducted using a de-identified anonymous data file, which means the identity of individual staff members will not be shared, and shared comments will not be linked to individuals.

For subrecipients: Because <grantee name> may have recommended you for this interview, however, it is possible that some of the staff there may be able to identify your experiences from the research report.

Your participation in this study is voluntary, and you may stop at any time. We will only use your responses for research purposes, and they will NOT be used for compliance monitoring.

Would you still like to participate in the study? <Ask for a verbal consent>

Do you have any questions before we begin?

If you have questions about the study after this interview, please email Dr. Hiren Nisar, the study’s project manager, at [email protected].

Interviewee List <Internal for the study team>

Interviewee	Role	Organization

Respondent Background

We would like to start by learning about any changes in your role since we last spoke.

1. Has your role at [insert grantee/organization name] changed since we last spoke? If so, how has your role changed? Who has replaced you in the previous role?

Context of Geographic Target Service Area

We last spoke with [insert names of people interviewed] at [insert grantee/organization name] in detail about the implementation of your Eviction Protection Grant Program in [insert month] 2023. For this conversation, we’d like you to think about the program’s later implementation and your more recent experiences.,

2. Can you describe any current eviction-related needs/concerns within your target service area that your organization is helping to address? [NOTE TO INTERVIEWER: REVIEW RESPONDENT’S PREVIOUS RESPONSES]

Probe (as needed): What are the current needs/concerns related to____?

• evictions rates

  • What is the estimated number (an estimate is fine) of eviction filings in your service area in the past year? How many of these were contested where both parties show up in court?

  • How many (an estimate is fine) repeat clients does your organization receive in any given year?

  • Do you keep a list of landlords who are serial eviction filers? If so, how many landlords are currently on the list? Can you share the list with us?

• access to legal services for individuals/families facing eviction

• eviction moratoriums

• access to non-legal services (e.g., support services) for individuals/families facing eviction

• access to rental assistance (e.g., tenants having trouble paying rent quickly enough when states/locals had trouble administering the ERAP program)

• tenants knowing their rights

  • Are there specific government agencies and/or non-governmental organizations helping tenants to understand their rights?

• local rental markets or landlord practices (e.g., soaring rents, flipping units, illegal evictions, etc.)

Execution

Next, we would like to understand all activities and services implemented with grant funding and factors that influenced implementation. While we have some understanding of your program, we’d like to find out more about your planned activities and the intended outcomes of your program, why these may have changed, and the challenges and successes of implementing your program that you are experiencing.

3. What are the current grant activities/services that your organization is providing within your target service area? How have they changed since the last time we spoke with you? And why did you decide to make those changes?

How have these activities/services been helpful?

4. What challenges have you faced implementing your grant activities/services?

Probe (as needed):

• What types of challenges have you faced when conducting activities related to ____?

• legal representation in relation to legal filings and court proceedings

• navigation and assistance responding to eviction actions by landlords

• collaboration with courts, judges, and other parties to create and promote diversion programs that reduce burden of eviction cases on courts

• assistance filling out fair housing complaints related to eviction

• assistance to clients navigating the transition process following eviction (e.g., school transfers, continuation of healthcare, access to assisted housing)

• assistance to clients to avoid negative impacts of potential eviction (e.g., referral to social services provider, Emergency Rental Assistance, healthcare services)?

5. How did you address these challenges?

6. What have been the most successful strategies your grant program has used to provide services to your clients?

Probe (as needed):

• What have been the most successful strategies your grant program has used related to ____?

• legal representation in relation to legal filings and court proceedings

• navigation and assistance responding to eviction actions by landlords

• collaboration with courts, judges, and other parties to create and promote diversion programs that reduce burden of eviction cases on courts

• assistance filling out fair housing complaints related to eviction

• assistance to clients navigating the transition process following eviction (e.g., school transfers, continuation of healthcare, access to assisted housing)

• assistance to clients to avoid negative impacts of potential eviction (e.g., referral to social services provider, Emergency Rental Assistance, healthcare services)?

• education and outreach to tenants at risk of, or subject to, eviction regarding their rights related to eviction, available resources, and the eviction process?

7. Did you have any success in serving your target population? [NOTE: INTERVIEWER TO KNOW AND REMIND PARTICIPANTS OF THEIR TARGET POPULATION]

Follow-up:

• If so, what success did you have? What helped/facilitated your success?

• If not, what challenges did you experience?

• Who did not receive services that needed or requested them? Why did they not receive services?

8. What marketing/outreach strategies have been the most successful in helping your program reach new clients?

• What marketing/outreach strategies have been most successful in reaching ____?

• older adults

• immigrant communities

• people with disabilities

• Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities [NOTE: INTERVIEWER TO LIST OUT TO SPECIFY BLACK, INDIGENOUS, AND PEOPLE OF COLOR]

• rural areas

• other vulnerable or high-risk communities

• How many people did you reach with your outreach efforts?

9. What challenges have you faced conducting marketing/outreach activities?

• How did you address these challenges?

10. Which planned activities were you unable to implement?

• What were the barriers/challenges to implementation of these activities?

11. What factors have helped you implement grant activities?

Probe (as needed):

• How has/have ____ helped you implement your grant activities/services?

• characteristics of your service area (e.g., geography, landlord practices, rental market trends, tenant characteristics, court structures, local laws, etc.)

• partners

• your resources

• programs

• people/staffing

• technology

• training

• previous experience or projects

• partnerships in place

• leadership/program champions

• procedures already in place

• HUD staff accessibility, HUD Office Hours, or HUD program materials

• HUD payment or reporting procedures

12. What data have you collected for your grant program?

    • Do you collect additional data beyond those required by the HUD-funded grant? If so, what kind of data?

    • How does your program use the collected data?

13. What challenges have you faced collecting and tracking program performance data?

Probe (as needed):

• How have you addressed these challenges?

• What systems/tools have been helpful?

Successes, Sustainability, and Lessons Learned

Now, we would like to ask you about overall program success, sustainability, and lessons learned.

14. Overall, what would you say have been the most successful activities/services of your grant program? Why has this activity/service been helpful?

15. What activities/services are you planning to continue implementing once the HUD grant funding ends?

    • How will your organization sustain these activities?

    • What is the greatest challenge your organization will face as it relates to sustainability once the HUD grant funding ends?

16. What are the key lessons learned about the implementation of your program that you think would be helpful to share with others?

    • What, if anything, would you do differently?

Scalability

Finally, we would like to ask you about considerations for scaling your program model (e.g., significantly expanding your program to serve more people).

17. What challenges do you envision if you had to scale up your program model to serve more people or a larger service area?

18. What about your program has not worked well and why?

19. How could your program design/model be improved?

20. What else would you like to share about your overall experience with the HUD Eviction Protection Grant Program that you haven’t had a chance to talk about or that I did not ask about?

Closing

Those are all the questions we have for you today. Now we would like to give you an opportunity to share anything else that you think would be helpful for us to know about your grant program.

_________________________________________________________________________________

We’d like to thank you for taking the time to speak with us. Should you have any additional thoughts that you would like to share, please feel free to contact us.