California Has Nearly $500M in COVID Homeowner Relief Still Unclaimed

What the $500 million refers to

California was the single largest state recipient under the federal Homeowner Assistance Fund (HAF), receiving roughly $1 billion of the nearly $10 billion Congress authorized under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The state stood up that money as the California Mortgage Relief Program, administered by the CalHFA Homeowner Relief Corporation in partnership with the state's Housing is Key initiative.

As of early 2024, industry reporting from HousingWire flagged that nearly $500 million of California's HAF allocation was still unspent, even as the program approached the end of its federal spend-down window. That remaining balance is what the "$500M" figure refers to — it is a milestone in the program's life cycle, not a separate federal appropriation on top of the original $1 billion.

How the program worked

Under the U.S. Treasury term sheet, California used HAF dollars to deliver one-time grants to income-qualified homeowners who fell behind because of a pandemic-related hardship. Covered categories included:

• Past-due first-mortgage payments and arrears
• Delinquent property taxes
• Partial claims and loan deferrals tied to forbearance exits
• Shortfalls on reverse mortgages, including property-charge defaults

Grants did not have to be repaid. Awards were paid directly to the mortgage servicer or taxing authority on the homeowner's behalf.

Why the money sat

Reporting and CalHFA statements pointed to three recurring issues:

• Servicer outreach gaps. Borrowers often did not learn about HAF from the companies collecting their payments, and each state ran its own intake portal, which complicated national servicer workflows.
• Eligibility friction. Early rules screened out homeowners who had cured short-term delinquencies or who held non-standard loans, so California expanded qualifying criteria in 2023 to bring more borrowers in.
• Pandemic-hardship documentation. Applicants had to tie their delinquency to COVID-19, which was harder to document the further the economy moved from 2020-2021.

Where it fits in the bigger picture

By the time the California Mortgage Relief Program wound down its pandemic-era HAF phase, CalHFA reported that it had deployed more than $900 million in assistance to over 37,000 California households — meaning the "nearly $500M remaining" headline from January 2024 reflected a mid-program snapshot rather than a final outcome. California has since redirected related state mortgage-relief work into successor programs funded outside HAF, including the CalAssist Mortgage Fund announced in 2025 for disaster-affected homeowners.

Who qualified

To qualify under the HAF-funded California Mortgage Relief Program, homeowners generally had to:

• Own and occupy a single-family home, condo, or permanently affixed manufactured home in California as their primary residence
• Have household income at or below a county-adjusted area-median-income cap (typically up to 150% AMI under later expansions)
• Document a COVID-19-related financial hardship that began on or after January 21, 2020
• Be past due on at least one qualifying housing payment, or have an approved forbearance or deferral to resolve

Sources and verification

The $500 million figure traces to HousingWire's January 2024 coverage of unspent HAF balances, and the $1 billion state allocation and program launch are documented on the U.S. Treasury HAF page, the CalHFA program site, and the Treasury-published California term sheet. See the sources list for direct links.