Katrina recovery resources

AHF on our main page has a compendium of resources for property owners affected by the storm and guidance on how others can help.

OSHA advising on Katrina cleanup

OSHA is offering detailed advice on the special hazards of flood cleanup work.

New Markets guidance updated

Good catch by the NH&RA newsletter:

The CDFI Fund has updated its guidance Q&A for New Markets Tax Credit applicants.

Going postal on off-campus housing?

The National Multi Housing Council is warning owners of apartment complexes near college campuses that the Postal Service may try to treat even privately owned buildings as "dormitories" and require the property owners to sort bulk mail for their tenants. Jim Arbury of NMHC writes, "To prevent this from expanding to other areas, it is critical that apartment firms not sign any agreement with the Post Office regarding change in mail service" and he would like to hear about any proposed changes along these lines in your area.

NMHC has also posted a request from federal emergency officials for short- and long-term rentals that could be made available to victims of Hurricane Katrina, especially in the affected states.

LIHTC mortgage insurance premiums down

HUD announces multifamily mortgage insurance premium (MIP) changes today, including a reduction to 45 basis points for "all sections of the National Housing Act where the mortgagor equity is produced from the proceeds of the sale of low-income housing tax credits." Comments on the rate changes are due via Regulations.gov or EDocket by September 29.

Also in today's Federal Register, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are changing their civil money penalty formulas.

Census reports poverty increase

The Census Bureau has released its Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2004 report (actual text in 3.7-MB PDF here) and the news is perhaps predictably not beautiful. Median income steady, poverty rate up from 12.5% to 12.7%, and a steady 15.7% without health insurance.

Meanwhile Prof. David Brady of Duke University notes that official formulas undercount the true number of Americans in poverty. He says the undercount probably skips more than 10 million people.

Money for panel means less for housing?

Interesting opposition from NPACH to the proposal noted at LISC a few days ago to create an "Affordable Housing Technical Assistance Board."

Not that it's all NPACH has to worry about today. They have an office in New Orleans.

Even Justice Stevens criticizes Kelo

Even the author of the much-decried Kelo eminent domain decision has harsh words for it.

Hurricane Katrina watch

Presidential disaster declarations are already signed for Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana. To follow relief efforts try the FEMA site.

[Update early Tuesday: Fannie Mae offering single-family mortgage relief in affected areas... and a suggestion that storm-caused demand for repair supplies and temporary housing may drive up housing costs overall...]

HUD rents only right 60% of the time

This one is from HAC News too: HUDUSER has a far from rosy view on the accuracy of HUD rents. It says, yes, that 40% of all HUD tenants in 2003 were paying too much or too little. This is a bit of a different view from the HUD self-assessment noted here a few days ago.

New Sec. 515 management fee formula

The HAC News rural housing roundup has spotted the new USDA Rural Housing Procedural Notice No. 389, which among other things changes the calculation method for Sec. 515 management fees. (Scroll down to the multifamily handbook inserts toward the bottom of the page.)

Native American housing conference set

It's sponsored by HUD, in Reno, September 19-22.

San Francisco's legendary I-Hotel is ready

One of the longest-running urban land use battles anywhere reaches a kind of happy ending this week with the reopening of San Francisco's International Hotel as low-income seniors' housing developed by the activist-backed Manilatown Heritage Foundation. There's background on the story over here.

[UPDATE 8/27: Full coverage from the Saturday SF Chronicle.]

REGIONAL: Oregon DDA changes

Oregon Housing and Community Services has the Oregon effect of the Difficult Development Area changes that were announced on Monday.

Wage determinations go digital

Prevailing wage requirements in federal service contracts are to be published on the Wage Determinations OnLine website outside the Federal Register, while general wage determinations under the Davis-Bacon Act are to continue appearing in the FR but also, apparently, on www.wdol.gov.

Apart from its importance to people working on federal contracts, this is an interesting item from an administrative law perspective. Designating such an impermanent medium as a website as the official means of publication for important federal announcements seems likely to raise a whole group of new legal issues. For example, although it should presumably be possible to prove the date when each new announcement was posted, how would a party to a dispute prove that technical difficulties in reviewing the site had arisen on a particular day -- for example, during a contract negotiation? Since the WDOL site will only calculate a wage amount after the user answers a series of questions, how does a prospective party to a contract gather a full understanding of how each factor influences the wage determination? What legal issues will arise around the use of official online request forms for individual wage determinations when users decide to bypass the automated system? How long will the superseded announcements be archived separately on the site? Will the archive of superseded announcements reflect small, apparently non-substantive changes such as punctuation corrections? Will an online system be more or less accessible to lower-paid employees?....

....Maybe there are things to be said for the printed page?

CBPP prefers Senate appropriations version

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has posted its state-by-state analysis of the Senate and House appropriations proposals as they would affect Sec. 8 voucher housing. There's even a "How Would Your Housing Agency Fare" calculator. Conclusions: they like the Senate version better, but both versions would give back only part of what has been cut from housing vouchers these past two years.

Sec. 8 landlords' forms up for comment

HUD is accepting comments until October 24 on two forms of interest to private apartment owners and developers:

- The group of forms used in making special claims related to Sec. 8 voucher tenancies.

- The HUD-92448 submitted by contractors on multifamily buildings.

50th percentile list changed, cut

HUD has issued a sharply revised list of 24 areas where it will allow local housing authorities to base their payment standards on "Fair Market Rents" taken from the local 50th percentile instead of the usual 40th -- which softens the effect of low-rent housing shortages by subsidizing slightly more expensive rentals. (If you want to skip ahead to the list it's on the third page of the PDF, first column.)

The list keeps only 14 out of the 48 metropolitan areas that were previously proposed for the 50th percentile dispensation this past June 2, while 10 new areas were added. Today's publication provides a detailed rationale for each of several factors that it says ruled out areas on the original list. Comments are due September 26, by snail mail to two separate addresses.

The final 50% list includes some center cities like Washington, D.C. and the high-growth areas of Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Tucson, and then also, interestingly, some second-rank urban centers -- for example, Tacoma but not Seattle; Providence, Hartford and New Haven but not New York or Boston; Orange and Riverside Counties in California but not L.A. Just a guess, but maybe low-budget renters are straining the housing markets in these places after getting priced out of fancier addresses?

[Lagniappe: If you'd like more detail about local housing trends, HUDUSER happens to have "comprehensive market analysis reports" available for several of the areas named in its 50th-percentile list. But for history and background on the FMRs in particular, see the HUDUSER FMRs data sets.]

HUD miscellany

- HUD is extending its CPD Notice 2003-01 for "responsible entities" that handle HUD environmental responsibilities under 24 CFR Part 58.

- HUD-903.1 brochures with housing discrimination information and complaint forms are now available on HUDCLIPS in Arabic as well as English, Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese. (Note: Explorer works better with these documents than Firefox.)

A little quieter in Atlanta

Don't board that midnight train to Georgia yet. M/PF spots a relative decline in REIT-driven apartment development around Atlanta.

HUD rates itself higher on management

Beltway items from the NLIHC newsletter include mention of the HUD President's Management Agenda Results Report for July, which claims it is closer to White House standards for improving housing conditions, reducing improper payments, and other management goals. Per the said report, "Announced in 2001, the PMA is an integral part of the President's vision that government should be citizen-centered, results-oriented, and market-based."

Out of eight "program areas" HUD identified as having improper payment problems in 2004, the agency said it had reduced concern about Homeless Assistance Grants, the HOME Investment Partnership Program, the Economic Initiative Special Purpose Grants, HOPE VI, and the Multifamily Housing Property Management System. Continued concerns applied to three very large remaining areas: the management and sale of single-family foreclosure homes, the Public Housing Capital Fund, and then, under a single heading, all 45 of HUD's rental housing assistance "program activities" as a group.

If you can wade through the jargon this report offers an interesting glance into HUD managers' offices. Maybe worth a look.

Handy research tips

The folks at Legal Services of Northern California have a regional emphasis but most of their tips and research links are helpful to anyone who does federal housing research. One of their discoveries, the e-CFR beta site, browses the Code of Federal Regulations much, much more crisply than regular GPO Access. Go take a look.

QCTs/DDAs published for tax credit housing

[UPDATED]

It's a big day for the tax credit business: this morning's Federal Register carries the annual HUD notice designating Qualified Census Tracts (QCTs) and Difficult Development Areas (DDAs) for recipients of low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC).

The labels go to either individual census tracts or larger areas where affordable housing development is considered particularly challenging due to high contrast between local incomes and local housing costs. Projects in these designated areas receive a 30% boost in tax credits.

This year it's only the DDAs that are changing: the QCTs remain as before -- mercifully for local developers' ability to plan. The relatively early timing of the announcement is also a boost to developers' planning; the previous announcement fell in November 2004, and HUD acknowledged around the same time that the announcement before that one, in December 2003, had caused difficulties for projects whose designations were changed on so little notice.

This year's DDA list may, however, provoke a different kind of controversy, as the figures used for "housing costs" are HUD's much-criticized Fiscal 2005 "Fair Market Rents." For these, and also for background and previous announcements on the DDAs/QCTs, see the "Data Sets" section of HUDUSER.

HUD explains its operating subsidy plans

Posted at HUDCLIPS today:

- PIH Notice 2005-31, explaining how HUD will determine public housing operating subsidies for the time being, considering that the agency is shifting over to a calendar year subsidy schedule and also preparing a new operating subsidy Final Rule for publication. (The Proposed Rule for the new operating subsidy plan was published April 14.) To avoid extra hassle, HUD will pay some 2006 subsidies on the basis of the paperwork submitted for Federal Fiscal Year 2005, then will issue new instructions after the new Final Rule appears.

- HSG Notice 2005-15, extending the existing rule on calculating and retaining excess income from Sec. 236 subsidized housing.

Not enough takers for HOPWA money?

HUD has opened up another HOPWA grantmaking round to use the rest of the $37 million available, after awarding only $18.8 million (see item below) under this year's SuperNOFA. HIV-related housing providers take note. Applications are due October 6.

Also in the Federal Register today:

- Comments are due Oct. 21 on the design of the "metropolitan sample" section of the American Housing Survey.

- The Federal Reserve is correcting its big Community Reinvestment Act notice of August 2. Just Paperwork Reduction Act paperwork but it might be worth a glance.

Sec. 515 prepayment blocked in Arkansas

The Eighth Circuit ruled on Thursday in Charleston Housing Authority v. USDA that an Arkansas public housing authority was properly barred under the Emergency Low Income Housing Preservation Act (ELIHPA) from prepaying a Sec. 515 loan on an apartment complex that it hoped to demolish. Tenants and an advocacy group, Housing Comes First, opposed the prepayment. They obtained district court orders finding that the housing authority had failed in its obligation under the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act of 1998 to "affirmatively further fair housing" and that it had violated the Fair Housing Act through disparate-impact racial discrimination against African Americans. The district court further ordered the housing authority to "reopen" the disputed apartments and "give priority to former residents who wished to return." The appellate court upheld these orders but did ask the district court to let the tenants and the housing authority submit evidence of circumstances that might have changed during litigation, apparently including the housing authority's statement that it had dropped its original plans to demolish the apartments for the purpose of "deconcentration."

The National Housing Law Project (NHLP), together with two Missouri legal service offices, assisted the tenants. It greeted the decision as a victory upholding the validity of ELIHPA. NHLP's statement said of the decision, "In upholding ELIHPA, it stakes out a clear, contrary position to those suggested in recent decisions by lower federal courts in Idaho and Oregon."

A sad episode in Mississippi

Just a paperwork glitch, but a painful one.

Sec. 8 tenant's civil rights claim rejected

The U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a civil rights lawsuit by a former Sec. 8 voucher tenant against the Detroit Housing Commission.

The tenant, Oliver Caswell, was sued for eviction by his private landlord, who alleged he was not keeping his apartment clean. While this court case was pending, Carswell also lost his Sec. 8 rent subsidy as a result of an administrative hearing where he represented himself. Caswell beat the underlying eviction case and won the right to remain in his apartment, but he later became homeless because he could not afford the full rent without his former subsidy. He sued the Housing Commission in federal court under the venerable 42 U.S.C. 1983, which alleges deprivation of civil rights under color of law, claiming that housing officials denied him procedural due process at the hearing and violated his rights under 24 CFR 982.311(b) by stopping his subsidy while the eviction case was still pending.

Both the trial court and the appellate court have now thrown out Caswell's claims. In this week's decision, the 6th Circuit rejected the due process allegations and held that Sec. 982.311(b) did not clearly entitle a tenant to continue receiving payments during an eviction proceeding.

HUD guidance out for CDBG grantees

HUDCLIPS has just posted a word of advice for local Community Development Block Grant administrators on how to estimate the percentage of low- and moderate-income people in their service areas. The item is CPD Notice 2005-06.

Disability units settlement in Houston

Here's an example of the disability legal issues that can arise: the Houston Housing Authority has just entered a settlement with HUD agreeing to make more units accessible to tenants with disabilities.

Testing for disability discrimination

NLIHC has spotted an excellent guidebook from HUD on identifying disability discrimination that should make extremely useful reading for property owners. This free PDF document is a detailed, in-depth look at ways of testing for the different forms of disability discrimination that is also backhandedly useful as advice on What Not To Do. It also provides a helpful and solidly footnoted introduction to the federal law of equal treatment and reasonable accommodation. Because mental and physical disabilities are as various as human beings, and their appropriate accommodations vary hugely with circumstances, the resulting law involves questions a lot more subtle than the presence or absence of a wheelchair ramp. This guidebook could be a genuine eye-opener. Do take a look.

HOPWA awards $18.8 million

That money is enough to help "more than 1,000" households in 13 of the 50 states. HUD has the details.

LIHTC scandal in Dallas

The mayor of Dallas has asked Texas allocating authorities not to approve new low-income housing tax credit projects for her city pending a major investigation involving the FBI. Read all about it at AHF.

Want to review NMTC applications?

Tax credit items in the NH&RA newsletter include an interesting invitation from the CDFI Fund for private consultants to review applications in the next New Markets Tax Credit round. Looks like not such bad terms of employment: spend two days at a training session, then review applications online, at $150 per, from "your preferred venue." Business attire hence presumably optional.

If you're interested, though, better hurry up. Online applications are due tomorrow.

A fistful of Rural Development notices

The Rural Development Administrative Notices page has just added several July and August announcements. None of them absolutely scream "multifamily housing," but maybe worth a look for AHF readers anyway.

A piece of history vanishes

This month the board of the USDA's Rural Telephone Bank voted to dissolve it and turn over its remaining loans to the Rural Utilities Service. The bank was established surprisingly recently, in 1971, but had its origins in federal loans for countryside telephone service that began in 1949 through amendments to the Rural Electrification Act of 1936.

CBO outlook: same old same old

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities finds not much to crow about in the Congressional Budget Office economic outlook released this past Monday.

CBPP is also announcing a media-only event next week that should be a hot ticket for housing wonks: low-income housing doyennes Barbara Sard and Sheila Crowley on a panel with Denise Muha, Executive Director of the National Leased Housing Association, all introducing CBPP state-by-state figures on the likely practical effects of the House and Senate housing appropriations proposals.

Some more August light reading for you

Here's a full plate of updates, webcasts, and reports from the LISC newsletter.

Scroll way down for an interesting Senate Appropriations proposal to create a "technical assistance board" to "help local nonprofits access and manage HUD program funds." Which is interesting to see alongside the promotion of grant application workshops that we've just mentioned here. Of course two data points don't make a trend, but is it possible there's some kind of general campaign afoot to promote correct grant administration among small grant recipients? Maybe to avoid a repeat of the OTAG-ITAG kerfuffle?

Church, meet State...

A HUD release out today calls attention to a series of training sessions designed to prepare "smaller community and faith-based organizations" to compete more successfully for public and private grants. Locations for the trainings include churches as well as public buildings and civic organizations. Tomorrow and Thursday, for example, members of "grassroots" groups in Little Rock can attend sessions at the North Little Rock Full Counsel Ministry. The workshops, which continue through September, are mainly scheduled in smaller cities though a handful are in places like Philadelphia and New York.

Sec. 8 appeal procedures open for comment

In HUD's handful of "information collections" today there's one standout: a request for comment on the due-process appeal procedures available to owners of Sec. 8 properties to contest the rent amounts set for their units. Comments are due October 17, by snail mail.

Also in the Federal Register today, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act reports must now be submitted to the Federal Reserve, not to HUD.

Yes, another SuperNOFA deadline extension

...this time for areas affected by Hurricane Dennis.

Nonprofits get "green building" funds

The Housing Assistance Council has helped Home Depot to choose recipients for $120,000 in "green building" grants to create environmentally friendly low-income housing.

...and since it seems to be construction day around here, may as well note the construction advice resources at HUD's Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH), and in the Building Technology publications archive at HUDUSER.

The time study man in construction

HUD's latest on making a construction site hum like a factory.

HOPE VI dispersals felt in greater Chicago

Households displaced from Chicago public housing by HOPE VI demolition-and-rebuilding projects are straining the Sec. 8 voucher markets and public services of outlying towns, per this report by the News-Gazette of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. You wonder if there's another side to the part of the story in which small-town officials view urban people from the projects as criminal. But otherwise, this looks like a serious effort to document what happens when a center city pushes its low-income residents toward the suburbs.

Actually it's interesting simply that in 2005 a Chicago-area newspaper has chosen to report in detail on a local HOPE VI aftermath, since in many other places public attention to the subject of displacement seems to be past its peak. In San Francisco, for example, there was reporting in 2001 on the former public housing residents who found they had to transfer their Sec. 8 vouchers to the suburbs. (SF competition for Sec. 8 apartments eased up a little after the dot-com bust, though it's still fierce by the standards of any inland city.) Similar concerns showed up in Florida in 2003 and in a critical 2002 report from the National Housing Law Project. You don't see those kinds of articles quite so often now.

Not that the subject has been completely dropped by any means. The Urban Institute has done a lot of "where are they now?" research, with some partly cheerful results and with new work appearing as recently as this summer. And a Google News search on the term "HOPE VI" brings up lots of recent articles. But the articles that mention HOPE VI in general-circulation papers mainly don't seem to be about where people go next when "the projects" are gone. That's becoming a subject for academics like the Urban Institute -- and of course for the displaced people themselves and for their new neighborhoods.

[UPDATE: Just this past Monday, the 8th Circuit federal appeals court sided with a St. Louis HOPE VI project against a tenant organization's claims that the displacement it caused was a disparate-impact violation of the the Fair Housing Act.]

Beware of the Blog...

The irrepressible grow-a-brain blogger has updated his list of real estate weblogs (in which, yes, we are included). Not much specifically on multifamily housing, but probably worth a look.

Days of Wine and Houses

They've awarded that $10 million for the "chronic alcoholics" demonstration project that appeared newly in this year's SuperNOFA. Remains to be seen what it does for people's dignity and employment prospects to name them publicly as drunks -- two local programs have even adopted the Victorian term "serial inebriates" out of the NOFA text -- but anyhow it's $10 million to bring long-term outdoor heavy drinkers in from the cold. Which is, of course, a good idea and not at all an easy task. If you know someone who has come indoors from homelessness, you know that, quite apart from any addictions involved, returning to life in conventional housing can be very nearly as difficult as the return of a soldier to civilian society.

Hoping very much that these programs will genuinely help traumatized people take those difficult steps toward both literal homes and the ability to feel at home. Hoping local authorities won't just treat the programs as a way to keep public drunks out of the shopping districts. According to the NOFA (sorry, it's a large PDF file, within which you want p. 14136), "Building upon existing collaborations, grantees are expected to work in conjunction with local law enforcement agencies and courts, including the police department, sheriffs department, superior court, city attorney, and/or city council, to identify and refer eligible clients to projects funded by this program." With a description like that, it seems like the local programs will need to be careful that they end up operating genuinely supportive housing and not just an extension of the criminal justice system.

[UPDATE 8/18: Here's a happier view of the program's possibilities from San Jose, CA.]

More rural housing prepayments coming?

HAC News spots a USDA proposal to Congress for "revitalization" of rural multifamily housing that, as HAC understands it, would "repeal restrictions on prepayment of Section 515 and 514 loans, create a new voucher program for 515 tenants displaced by prepayments, require some 515 tenants to pay minimum rents, and enable 515 owners with loans made before January 1, 1992 to restructure their debts." It's a prospect that could change the rural housing picture radically, as there seem to be quite a few owners of aging Sec. 514 and 515 properties who would jump at the chance to get out of the subsidized housing business through prepayment. Unclear how this proposal would interact with the Franconia Associates holding (mentioned here in Monday's post), which upheld prepayment rights for certain Sec. 515 owners with older mortgages.

Further on new 202/811 application rules

HUD has a clarification out today saying that applicants for housing grants under Secs. 202 and 811 who are being allowed to submit their applications on paper should send them "to the local HUD office or Program Center office and not to the HUD Multifamily Hub office. HUD will not penalize an applicant who, prior to today's Federal Register date, did not see this technical correction and who submitted an application to the Multifamily Hub office."

The possibility of submitting paper applications was created by a notice issued this past Tuesday. Also re: Tuesday's notice, this space should perhaps have made clearer that applicants need to ask for a review of their electronic application difficulties and in fact must submit documentation of same by this coming August 23.

A little happy news for a Friday

The San Francisco Chronicle's Carol Lloyd offers a glowing profile of new affordable family apartments by the Tenderloin Neighborhood Development Corporation. Even by Tenderloin standards, 145 Taylor is a pretty tough address. This project took guts.

Commerce Dept. issues SACI-free regs

In an interim final rule issued today, the Commerce Department revises and recodifies rules for the Economic Development Administration (EDA) to carry on its current programs -- which is, among other reasons, interesting because the White House has spent this whole past budget season trying to reshape much of what EDA does. The preamble in today's rule announcement notes that the Bush Administration has proposed replacing 18 EDA and other programs (including the Community Development Block Grants) with a single fund under EDA authority, tentatively labeled the Strengthening America's Communities Initiative (SACI). But it notes a need to update regulations for existing programs and authorizations, and for "new Investments pursuant to appropriations for Fiscal Year 2006 that Congress may enact."

Although the Commerce Department has been operating an SACI advisory committee and website for some time, Congress has not approved any such program, and there has in fact been intense bipartisan opposition to changing the shape of existing community and economic development programs.

LIHTC investment in the Federal Register

Every once in a while the investment and trading sides of the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) show up in the Federal Register. Today it's a Notice of application for an order granting relief from certain provisions of the Investment Company Act of 1940 as they would apply to a couple of series within a larger group of housing tax credit funds set up by The WNC Companies. Here's a similar previous Federal Register notice from 2003.

Base closure rule changes proposed

Well, the preamble to yesterday's proposed rule begins by suggesting the Defense Dept. is just codifying some of its exising directives and practices at the Federal Register level, but then there are some changes to reflect Congressional action, and then a few brand-new sections, including on environmental, safety, and historic preservation issues.... so on the whole it looks pretty substantive after all. Housing and community development people affected by military base closures may want to take a good look. Comments are due October 11, by snail mail. And if any readers joining us here are working specifically on base closure issues, would you kindly consider making use of the comments section below?

IRS rule agenda includes housing tax credits

Credit to the folks at Novogradac for spotting this one: the new IRS Priority Guidance Plan is out, and the items include these under General Tax Issues:

5. Guidance under section 42 regarding the low income housing credit.

6. Proposed regulations under section 42(h) regarding the requirements for a qualified contract.

Of further possible interest to affordable housing and community development folks are plans to issue guidance on the Work Opportunity Tax Credit and the Welfare-to-Work Credit, and on Sec. 141 regarding refundings and "allocation and accounting provisions" for tax-exempt bonds.

There's a handy appendix of "Regularly Scheduled Publications" as well, including the reminder that March '06 is the next publication date for the population figures that determine each state's share of housing tax credits and tax-exempt bonds.

HUD to review electronic application glitches

After a long series of deadline extensions and similar allowance-making for individual programs, HUD announced today it will conduct a "quality control review of electronic application submission difficulties" for all the applications based on the March 21, 2005 SuperNOFA. HUD staff are to go over their own records and those of the Grants.gov service in search of applicants who followed instructions but whose applications didn't get through properly.

A bonanza for older Sec. 8 landlords?

A July federal court decision could let Sec. 8 landlords sue for as much as $1.3 billion, according to a Recap Advisors analysis posted today.

Statesman II Apartments, Inc. v. United States, decided July 20 by the Federal Court of Claims., found that when Congress passed a law in 1994 changing the procedure for Annual Adjustment Factors increasing Sec. 8 rents, it breached the contracts of property owners who had entered agreements with HUD based on the earlier procedure.

The two plaintiff property owners in Statesman II had signed contracts with HUD in the early 1980s that promised automatic annual rent adjustments, but the 1994 law put the burden on the owners to prove each year that the rent increases would not push Sec. 8 rents higher than comparable rents in the private market. The two plaintiffs each went eight years without either claiming or receiving rent increases from HUD. Last month the court agreed with them that they should have received the increases automatically.

The decision relied in part on two earlier Supreme Court cases on the rights of private contractors to enforce contracts against the federal government despite subsequent legislation: U.S. v. Winstar Corp. and Franconia Associates v. U.S. Housing folks may remember that the Franconia case allowed owners of subsidized rural housing to prepay their mortgages despite legislation that attempted to preserve the housing stock by stopping prepayments.

Rural housing preservation chat tomorrow

KnowledgePlex and the Housing Assistance Council will be presenting an "Expert Chat" tomorrow on rural rental housing preservation with several Sec. 515 experts to speak. Looks like it's open to the public but with limited space. You need Internet and phone or streaming audio access to join what's essentially a souped-up conference call. Details over here.

HUD to recalculate 2003 Sec. 8 admin. fees

Public and Indian Housing Notice 2005-30, out Friday at HUDCLIPS, says HUD has changed its mind on how to calculate administrative fees payable to housing authorities for 2003 -- and how much fee money housing authorities may owe back to HUD. The ruling affects only 2003, not more recent years. Practical effects are hard to figure, but it looks like some housing authorities might lose money here.

HUD OIG follows Sec. 8, mortgage financing

Interesting to note what catches the attention of the HUD Office of Inspector General. Browsing the "external reports" section -- i.e. reports on entities other than HUD itself -- we find that out of 28 audit reports published from May 2005 up to the present, nine criticize housing authorities' administration of Sec. 8 programs (for details click on CA, CT, MO, NJ, PA, TN, TX and WA) and ten criticize private companies for their handling of HUD-insured loans or HUD mortgage insurance (for details click on GA, KS, NV, OK, TN, TX, UT, and WA). Among the nine remaining audits there's not much of a pattern. For those see AZ (HOME funds), DC (supportive housing grant accounting), MI (senior housing overcharges), NC (contracting procedures), OH (Annual Contributions Contract funds), PA (HOME again, and risking HUD assets to support a non-HUD project), TA (use of public housing funds) and VA (missing payments on three mortgages).

Bank Enterprise and TA Awards are out

See the CDFI Fund site for details of the $12 million granted today in Bank Enterprise Awards and Technical Assistance grants.

BEA pays cash awards to financial institutions that do business with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) or increase their direct service to disadvantaged communities. The program has been much watched in recent years, with OMB repeatedly recommending against it and community development advocates lobbying intensely to save it -- thus far with success, though its budget has been sharply reduced. The $9,896,217 awarded today is considerably less than in most past years.

Technical Assistance awards go to assist current or would-be CDFIs with capacity building. Today's grants totaled $2,052,420.

202/811 SuperNOFA competitions reopened

HUD is reopening three more SuperNOFA grant competitions: the Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly program; the closely related Section 811 Supportive Housing for Persons with Disabilities program, and the Service Coordinators in Multifamily Housing program. In all three cases the new application deadline is September 6. These are the most recent of several reopenings of SuperNOFA competitions, apparently because of trouble with the new electronic application process.

Also in the Federal Register today:

- The Rural Community Development Initiative is soliciting applications for "approximately $6 million of grant funds" for financial and technical assistance through "intermediary organizations. Applications are due November 3.

- There's a proposed rule out on HUD foreclosure sales of multifamily projects, expressing new legal requirements under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004. Indirect purchasers of HUD multifamily buildings would have to follow the same rule as direct purchasers and "certify that all other properties owned by the purchaser, and located in the same city or town as the project being purchased, are in substantial compliance with applicable state or local government housing statutes, regulations, ordinances, and codes."

HUD's take on the meaning of NIMBY

Light summer reading from the folks at HUDUSER:

It's a whole issue of HUD's Cityscape journal on "Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing." Meaty scholarly articles here: not just a newsletter.

Homelessness bill could merge programs

NLIHC offers a full plate of legislative updates this week, and among them is a note that the "Community Partnership to End Homelessness Act of 2005," expected to be introduced in the Senate later this month, would call for "...consolidating many of the grant programs within McKinney-Vento into a single competitive grant program called the Homeless Assistance Program..." That's an idea that calls for a lot of adjustment and jockeying by housing people if it affects Shelter Plus Care, Section 8 Mod Rehab, or the Supportive Housing Program. (For those not familiar with the programs, the Technical Assistance Collaborative has a rundown.) So this is an issue that might be well worth watching.

Is Montgomery qualified to run the FHA?

Strong words and sharp questions from our publisher, Andre Shashaty, in the August AHF:

From what I gather, Brian Montgomery is a nice enough man. My problem is that he does not appear to be qualified to run the housing programs of the United States as assistant secretary for housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the post he assumed in June.

I know that standards for government service have fallen steadily in the last few decades. I also understand that George W. Bush is like any president. He rewards the people who helped him get elected, as Montgomery did when he was a campaign advance man.

But this is a time when strong, experienced leadership is badly needed at HUD. The insurance programs of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) are threatened by rising defaults. The HUD-assisted portfolio is in dire need of good management to preserve as much affordability as possible. Sec. 8 assistance is under the gun and public housing agencies need help from HUD to undertake bold new initiatives.

Few people will miss John Weicher, the previous assistant secretary, who reportedly had trouble making decisions. But industry leaders I spoke to don’t see how Montgomery can do much better. His resume, as summarized by HUD’s PR people, shows precious little management experience, no housing finance or financial management capabilities, and very little achievement outside the Bush-Cheney political operation.

For the record, Montgomery was not available for an interview prior to press time. However, our review of public records was revealing.

Montgomery is 48, at which age most people have 25 or more years of work experience. HUD’s press release goes back only to 1995 in describing his employment history. So, what kind of jobs did he hold before then? HUD isn’t saying.

According to HUD, Montgomery was communications director at the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs (TDHCA) and the Texas Department of Economic Development from 1995 to 1999.

He was deputy assistant to the president and cabinet secretary beginning in January 2003, and director of presidential advance from 2001 until 2003. He was chief deputy and director of special events and operations for the 2001 presidential inaugural committee, and director of advance for the Bush-Cheney 2000 presidential campaign.

He is a graduate of the University of Houston, but HUD does not say what he studied, or what degree he obtained.

Montgomery’s comments at his Senate confirmation hearing did nothing to assuage the industry’s concerns. He played up his “humble” roots and his compassion for the poor and elderly. Then he boasted about TDHCA’s efforts to steer assistance to border regions of Texas called colonias.

Montgomery failed to recount for the senators that one of his main duties at TDHCA was to defend it against charges of mismanagement by officials appointed by then-governor George Bush. The director he worked for resigned under pressure, a board member was convicted of bribery, and the whole agency was subject to a major investigation that resulted in legislative reforms in June 2001.

In short, Montgomery looks like a horrible choice on paper, unless, of course, his only charge is to spend less and less money and make HUD less and less relevant....

Read the rest at our main site.

HUD website headed for an overhaul?

Looks like HUD's Office of Community Planning has awarded a new Web contract that might even fix some of these online application glitches.

CRA final rule: it's official

The Federal Register got around to publication of the three-agency Community Reinvestment Act final enforcement rule today. (PDF version here.) We described the gist of this one earlier, when the text was first announced.

The new rules do reduce the thoroughness of CRA enforcement (or the burden thereof, depending who you ask), but the reductions are not so sharp as seemed possible a year ago. During the drawn-out approval process for these new enforcement standards, community development advocates argued that every lost bit of regulatory carefulness would give bankers one more chance to avoid doing business with low-income and minority customers as the CRA requires. Banking institutions -- and, to some extent, regulators themselves -- have argued that the new rules reduce unnecessary paperwork and give flexibility to local bank managers who know the needs of their own communities better than officials in Washington do.

Stay tuned: word has it we'll be publishing a column by John Taylor of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition in the September issue of Affordable Housing Finance.

Air conditioning: not a luxury in Phoenix

Some Arizona members of Congress want to know why HUD won't pay air conditioning bills for subsidized housing in hot climates.

Meanwhile homeless people in Phoenix are still dying disproportionately of the heat, and while some immediate moves are being made to distribute water and to increase shelters' daytime opening hours, it is not clear if any broader civic self-examination has resulted.

(Readers, any thoughts on same?)

Greater Efficiency Through E-Government (Not)

Some corrections out today on the Main Street HOPE VI grant application instructions, including that "because of the short time frame involved [applications are due September 2] and the need to obligate this assistance before the end of the fiscal year, electronic applications will not be accepted." So once again it looks like they don't trust Grants.gov to get stuff right.