The HUD appropriations deal, and more...

The most recent edition of the NLIHC Memo to Members describes (gasp!) the conference agreement on HR 3058, the HUD appropriations bill, the Senate program cuts, the state of the impending FEMA aid cutoff, and more. Also mentioned at NLIHC is a "Questions and Answers" document posted by HUD's Office of Community Planning and Development that will impose a new testing system of "objectivees" and "outcomes" affecting recipients of CDBG, HOME, and HOPWA funding as well as Emergency Shelter Grants.

Otherwise piled up in the hopper during our latest glitch-induced blog silence:

- The New York Times reports on the state of New Orleans public housing and quotes Sec'y Jackson as having said, "We are not going to build traditional public housing anymore."

- More distressing news of Hurricane Wilma's effect on the Florida housing market.

- ACORN is bluntly calling FEMA's planned end to hotel subsidies an "eviction" likely to be "putting families out into the street," and is organizing against it.

- The Housing Assistance Council has a report out on the usefulness of state-level rural housing assistance in "welfare to work" transitions.

- The House Financial Services Committee has marked up and reported HR 2695, a bill that would amend the McKinney-Vento Act to protect battered women from being tracked by abusers through transitional housing and shelter reporting systems.

- The IRS has posted a renewal charter for its Advisory Committee on Tax Exempt and Government Entities.

- HUD has issued an information collection notice on loan servicing of its coinsurance programs, including 221(d).