County seeks intergovernmental agreement with IHDA to spend leftover ERAP2 funds

Kane County staff told the Development Committee Aug. 19 they are exploring an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) with the Illinois Housing Development Authority (IHDA) to use any unspent Emergency Rental Assistance Program 2 (ERAP2) funds before federal closeout deadlines. Mark Bankerc​off, planning and special projects staff, said the county’s internal ERAP2 program must obligate and spend certain buckets of federal funds by Sept. 30. “We have until the September to have signed agreements for those rental payments,” he said, describing the county’s landlord-directed rental assistance and a larger set of capital-project options that were added later to help spend the funds. Bankercoff said the county has received “a boatload” of applications — which he clarified as “somewhere about over 200 new applications” — and that staff have been processing those applications and screening recipients. To avoid returning unused funds to the Treasury, staff proposed an IGA with IHDA so the state agency could spend any remaining eligible funds on similar rental assistance or approved capital projects in Kane County. The county also recently contracted a temporary staffer (through MGT) to assist with grant closeout work; Bankercoff said sufficient administrative funding remains in the grant to cover that contract. The committee did not take final action on the proposed IGA at this meeting but approved forwarding a recommended intergovernmental agreement to the county board for execution.