The Housing Opportunities and Prevention of Evictions (HOPE) Program was established in the NC Office of Recovery and Resiliency (NCORR) to help pay rent and utilities for low- and moderate-income households that have been negatively financially affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
• As of March 4, 2021, the HOPE Program has made over 33,600 utility awards worth over $19.6 million.
• Over 20,600 utility awards have been paid with the pace of payments increasing rapidly in recent weeks as NCORR has built out our capacity.
This communication is meant to update you on the progress of the HOPE Program relative to utility payments so that you can know what to expect as NCORR works to complete payments for the current round of funding.
Beginning March 1, 2021, all HOPE files will be centralized with NCORR as our community partners’ sub-recipient agreements come to an end. This means that approximately 16,000 HOPE applicant files will be moved from community partners to NCORR HOPE staff to complete their awards and payments.
NCORR’s HOPE Specialists will work these remaining files to do the following:
• confirm past due amounts with utility providers,
• make utility awards to HOPE applicants, and
• pay utility awards once the 5-day applicant opt out period has expired.
Since NCORR has built up the capacity to make payments directly to utility providers (as opposed to those that previously came through community partners), we have begun to batch payments of multiple applications paid to a utility provider. The reference information that we are able to provide for utilities to reconcile the payment is the service address.
If you receive a HOPE payment that you have questions about, you can e-mail hopefinance@ncdps.gov directly to get help resolving your issue.
We appreciate your patience and partnership as we work to pay past due utilities for thousands of our fellow North Carolinians that have suffered economic hardship as a result of the pandemic.
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