From the amazing world of HUD contracting

What a phenomenal amount of hurry-up-and-wait it must take to get a HUD multifamily property management contract. A message emailed yesterday to the HUD contract opportunities mailing list -- and received on yr obd't blogmother's account only today -- announced a "Public Announcement of Performance Decision" on an available contract for "Multifamily Housing Rental Assistance Contract Administration for Programs Other Than Section 8." (Looks like the 2005 date on this page is a typo.) Anyone who wants a "debriefing" on the subject has to send an email to the proper official within three days of the notice. Since the announcement was made on a Friday, and there's no reference to "business days," that could mean interested parties have to send their emails by Monday on pain of not hearing the inside skinny on the contract. On the other hand, this contract has already been the subject of proposals for a "negotiated procurement" in a process that has been going on since April 2004 -- so presumably there's a population of interested parties who already know most of what to expect. Parsing further, it looks like the "performance decision" consists of determining the stages and durations for the contract, deciding to take the lowest "technically acceptable" bidder in each of eight regions to be served, and publicly announcing HUD's estimated cost to run the same buildings with its own staff.

Admittedly, this space mainly covers HUD in terms of grants and other subsidies rather than direct contracting, so comments would be extremely helpful from readers on the contracting side of things who are able to provide some more context. But, good grief, what an extremely specialized, sophisticated, high-level job it must be to get a contract providing such ordinary practical services to poor people in poor neighborhoods.