Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The Development Bank of American Samoa (DBAS) launched a public comment portal on June 24 at www.dbas.as for its Statement of Activities of its Housing Rehabilitation Project under the U.S Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Preservation Grant (HPG) for review.

Information provided will be used to help DBAS prioritize and plan assistance for home repair or rehabilitation to low- or moderate-income homeowners in Aunu’u, according to a public notice by the development bank, as published in Samoa News this week and on the bank’s website. Comments are accepted through July 5.

In the statement of activities, posted on its website, DBAS estimates to use the grant funds to assist eight very-low-income households and four low-income households. And all the 12 homeowners are minorities.

Grant funding totals $100,000 and DBAS has budgeted $88,000 for construction project costs and the balance for administration fees.

DBAS will post public service announcements to inform the residents of low- and very- low- income in Aunu’u of the availability of funding through the HPG and the date, time, and place of the workshop on the application process for the funding.

At the workshop, attendees will be required to complete the mandatory sign-in, which is the basis for issuing a lottery ticket. In addition, the workshop presenters from DBAS will discuss the submission of required documents for review — such as the separation agreement and photo identification — to determine the eligibility to join the lottery.

Once the review is completed, DBAS will post another public service announcement of the date, time, and place to pick the lottery tickets. At the public lottery, selected participants will pick eight tickets randomly from a clear box for the very-low-income residents and four tickets for the low-income residents from another clear box.

DBAS will send notification letters to the 12 lottery winners, who are the HPG funding recipients for when the preliminary inspection begins.