On Jan. 7 the Housing Opportunity Fund Advisory Board spent its longest agenda block discussing how to allocate roughly $650,000 in demonstration dollars. Members favored splitting funds between larger, theme-based pilot grants and a smaller pool reserved for emergent or urgent needs; they asked staff to use a more robust application for pilots and a streamlined, rolling form for emergencies.

Eric (last name not provided), URA staff, showed a draft JotForm application with an accessibility audit and a 30-point scoring rubric. He said he had "made a few edits specifically around accessibility" and added a scoring system that would be partially auto-calculated and partially reviewed manually. Eric asked the advisory how much of each application packet the board wanted to review. Several advisory members said they prefer fewer, larger awards and more narrative context from staff rather than reviewing dozens of full packets.

Board members recommended two principal tracks: an innovation/pilot track with two application cycles per year and larger award amounts, and an emergent/urgent track with a rolling application for time-sensitive needs. The chair offered a straw man to split funding between innovation and emergencies with two cycles for innovation and rolling review for emergencies; members discussed splits ranging from 70/30 to 65/35 (innovation/emergent) and settled on continuing discussion but agreed to keep both tracks in the model.

The group agreed to form a small ad hoc committee, convened by Tanika Harris, to draft definitions and criteria for "innovation" and "emergent" requests and to bring those definitions back to the full advisory before the February meeting. Eric agreed to circulate the JotForm draft to advisory members for written feedback; URA staff will continue preliminary vetting of applications and provide summarized materials to the advisory prior to deliberations.

Members emphasized preserving flexibility for urgent local needs (for example, housing disruptions after fires) while prioritizing substantial, scalable pilot investments. The advisory signaled it will rely on URA staff for initial screening and bring a smaller set of vetted applications to the board for deeper qualitative review.