Keuka Housing Council, Inc. (KHC) is committed to ensuring the privacy of our clients.
We realize that the concerns you bring to us are highly personal in nature. We assure you that all information shared both orally and in writing will be managed within legal and ethical considerations. Your “nonpublic personal information”, such as your total debt information, income, living expenses and personal information concerning your financial circumstances will be provided to creditors, program monitors, and others only with your authorization and signature on the Authorization to Release Information page provided in our application packet. We may also use anonymous aggregated case file information for the purpose of evaluating our services, gather valuable research information, and designing future programs.
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What is nonpublic, personal information?
Nonpublic, personal information is information that identifies you; such as your name, address, social security number, assets, and income. This also includes personal financial information such as credit history, income, employment history, financial assets, bank account information, and financial debts.
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What personal information does KHC collect about you?
● Information that was provided on application, forms, emails or verbally.
● Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others.
● Information we receive from your creditors or employment references.
● Credit Reports. -
What categories of information do we disclose and to whom?
We may disclose the following personal information to financial service providers (such as companies providing home mortgages), Federal, State, and nonprofit partners for program review, monitoring, auditing, research, and/or oversight purposes; and/or any other pre-authorized individual and/or organization. The types of information we disclose are as follows:
● Information you provide on applications/forms or other forms of communication. This information may include your name, address, Social Security Number, employer, occupation, account numbers, assets, expenses, and income.
● Information about your transactions with us, our affiliates, or others, such as your account balance, monthly payment, payment history, and method of payment.
● Information we receive from a consumer credit reporting agency; such as your credit bureau reports, your credit and payment history, your credit scores, and/or your credit worthiness.
● We do NOT sell or rent your personal information to outside entities.
● We may share anonymous, aggregate case file information; but this information may not be disclosed in a manner that would personally identify you in any way. This is done in order to evaluate our programs, gather valuable research information, and/or design future programs
● We may disclose personal information about you to these parties as permitted by law. -
How is your personal information secured?
We restrict access to your nonpublic information to the KHC employees who need to know that information in order to perform their housing counseling duties. We maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to guard your nonpublic information. We train our staff to safeguard client information and prevent unauthorized access, disclosure, or use.
During the course of your involvement in any of KHC’s programs, you may receive relevant information regarding other services that our agency offers which include Rental Counseling, Homebuyer Education, Foreclosure Counseling, Credit and Budget Counseling, leasing of apartments owned by our Agency, and Homebuyer/ Homeowner Assistance which could include down payment assistance and or housing rehabilitation. Our Federal funding sources are the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). Our State funding sources are the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) and the NYS Division of Housing and Community Renewal. We also receive funding from The Nord Family Foundation (NORD) and the William G. McGowan Charitable Fund.
By signing our Privacy Policy page on our application, you are giving us permission to give personal information to others that we feel may help your housing situation. You understand that information gathered may be used for research, program or policy development and/or other legitimate purposes. You are under no obligation to receive any other services from KHC or our partners to receive housing counseling services.
You may also receive contact information from other institutions and/or agencies including human service agencies, lending organizations and others that may be of assistance regarding your specific situation. KHC has no financial standing in and will not benefit financially from your relationship with these organizations.
KHC and its employees are not attorneys and information that is given should not be taken as legal advice.
