Major rent news in today's Federal Register

In HUD's part of the Federal Register today, one small new item plus developments on two major previously released regulatory announcements.

The small item first: HUD is extending the current HOPWA application deadline from Oct. 6 to Oct. 13.

In addition to that, today's issue posts formal versions of two announcements that we've already noted in other forms, one of them with an important new preamble:

- Today we have Federal Register publication of the Public and Indian Housing Katrina waiver list that was posted a few days ago on HUD's important page for "Program Guidance, Waivers and Notices In Response to Hurricane Katrina." This list grants some automatic leeway to housing authorities within Hurricane Katrina disaster areas, and invites both these and other public housing authorities to request many different types of waivers using a request checkoff form published here. The Federal Register version looks all but cosmetically identical to what we described here last Thursday. Not noted then, however, and very much worth noting: Item 12 in the list of waivers includes a possibility for housing authorities to subsidize higher rents than usual -- 120% or more of established Fair Market Rents.

- Today the Federal Register also publishes HUD's final Fair Market Rents for 2006 (full tables available in the PDF version here). These final FMRs, as we noted on Friday, were posted in advance of the statutory Oct. 1 deadline on the HUDUSER FMR data page. The new material in today's posting consists of a preamble that explains the revisions to last June's proposed figures and gives some indications of HUD's future action. It says today's figures only partly reflect HUD's Aug. 25 FMR 50th-percentile notice, which proposed major changes to the list of cities permitted to set their FMRs at the 50th instead of the 40th percentile: today's figures do include 50th-percentile FMRs for the areas that were identified in August as being newly eligible for such increases, but they do not yet show decreases for the areas where FMRs are proposed to be cut down from 50th to 40th percentile. The preamble adds:

HUD asks that areas please take special note that unless information is submitted that changes the results of the eligibility determinations issued in the August 25, 2005 notice, the proposed reductions in FMRs from the 50th to the 40th percentile for selected areas will be implemented in a subsequent notice.

The FMRs in today's notice grant six increases above the June figures based on random dialing surveys, for areas in Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Puerto Rico. HUD has declined to change the figures for several other areas based on its surveys. Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment in rural Puerto Rico rose to $352, up from $309 -- a figure amazing from the perspective of this desk in San Francisco, where FMR was left at $1536 for a two-bedroom apartment despite strenuous local protests that the figure was too low. Today's FMR notice acknowledges that its figures are based on data from before Hurricane Katrina. It says: "HUD's Office of Public and Indian Housing will be issuing a notice within the next few weeks that addresses how PHAs may obtain disaster-related exceptions FMRs to meet local needs." Not clear, however, whether this is referring to a notice that's still to come or to the PIH notice that actually appears right next door in the same Federal Register issue today.

[UPDATE: From discussion of the FMR's announcement in the new NLIHC Memo to Members, which is packed with all kinds of other major news and will get a closer look here later today:

The most significant change is that HUD has decided to revert to using a state minimum FMR. This minimum is set at the statewide median nonmetropolitan rent level and is meant to assure that voucher holders will be able to secure decent housing in rural areas that may be poorly served by rental housing. While this was the practice in the years immediately before FY05, a new wrinkle this year is that the statewide minimum is not allowed to exceed the U.S. median nonmetropolitan rent level. As a result, this change primarily affects small nonmetropolitan counties in the South with low rents.

And that's just part of the NLIHC analysis. It's very much worth a look.]