The California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) is implementing a three-phase action plan to improve its loan closing processes which will focus on:
- Increased standardization of loan documents
- Increased transparency and predictability around application scoring
- Improved customer service through predictable, assigned contacts to assist post-award
- Increased efficiency through electronic signatures
- Ongoing feedback
The first phase will include the following:
- Within the next 30 days, HCD will post all available boilerplate loan documents including Standard Agreements and Regulatory Agreements for each funding source and round on the HCD’s website.
- Within 90 days HCD will strive to produce all remaining loan documents for all funding programs and rounds that are currently not available and publish them on the HCD’s website. Moving forward for upcoming funding programs and rounds, HCD will strive to publish boilerplate documents within 90 days of issuing awards.
- With respect to competitive NOFAs, within two weeks of each application due date, HCD will begin posting a list of all applications received, including each applicant’s preliminary self-score where applicable. HCD will update this list with final scores and rankings when the award announcements are made.
- Within the next 30 days, HCD will publish contact information on each program website page for post-award issues related to the standard agreement or loan closing.
- HCD will establish procedures for electronic signatures for loan documents and Standard Agreements.
- HCD will begin distributing customer service surveys within 60 days of loan closings to continue collecting new feedback to see how we’re improving.
The second phase of action items will be released in the Spring of 2019.
