Another CRA enforcement tweak

On Friday a "final rule and technical correction" amended the Community Reinvestment Act enforcement rules at the FDIC, Federal Reserve, and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Effects include raising the upper limit on the "small bank" regulatory category from $250 million to $258 million in assets, and on the "intermediate small bank" category from $1 billion to $1.033 billion in assets.

Parsing HUD's proposed mixed-finance rule

The Nixon Peabody law firm has posted a detailed analysis of last Wednesday's proposed rule "streamlining" applications to build mixed-finance housing. The super-short version is, some paperwork requirements get dropped but a double handful of "certifications and assurances" get added. Also, "the Proposed Rule explicitly makes subsidy layering review applicable to this program, which is consistent with what HUD practice has been."

Too much money to stay housed?

Another sign of the times comes to us from the Detroit suburb of Wayne, Michigan, where local TV reports that the already "low-income senior" tenants in a HUD-subsidized building may have to leave their apartments because the new buyer, nonprofit National Church Resources, has bought the place in a tax-credit deal that lowers the income requirements for tenants. Existing tenants who have too much money to stay under the new requirements are being offered $3000 apiece to leave. "One woman has quit her part-time job to qualify."

"I just want to go home."

I'm offering a clipping from the lefty weblog Buzzflash due to the credentials of its author, Bill Quigley, a law professor who is among the attorneys for the New Orleans public housing plaintiffs. He gives an affecting account here of two aging sisters' hard lives and their simple request for a chance to re-enter and repair their own looted homes.

The Sec. 8 renewal guide changes online

A few days ago we learned HUD had revised its Section 8 Renewal Policy guide, but it wasn't immediately clear where to find the new text online. Thanks to RHIIP Tips, we now have the answer: it's over here.

A snapshot from Mississippi

The Pascagoula paper editorializes against "disaster relief for the connected."

Thursday federal snippets

The Federal Housing Finance Board has a final rule limiting excess stock, and HUD is requesting comment on the "quality control" survey that looks for mistakes in rental subsidies.

Suit filed on anti-immigrant rent ordinance

MALDEF and the Dallas ACLU are suing the town of Farmers Branch, Texas over an ordinance against renting to undocumented immigrants. Among other points, they say the ordinance shouldn't force landlords to act as immigration officers.

Wednesday mix: another formapalooza

It's a busy day in HUD announcements:

- HUD extended a raft of hurricane recovery regulatory waivers until the end of 2007.

- We have the recently promised proposed rule "streamlining" the application process for mixed-finance housing developments, including under HOPE VI. The goal would seem to be fewer closing documents. Comments are due Feb. 26.

- Noncompetitive Section 8 awards are posted today. These consist of HOPE VI awards and "tenant protection" funding in and out of public housing.

- HUD has a long string of preliminary announcements for form revisions and surveys: a survey of rental properties eligible for the Service Coordinators Program... a survey of regulatory barriers to manufactured housing... forms for use in the Assisted Living Conversion Program and Emergency Capital Repair Program... the SF 424 application form under the Rural Housing and Economic Development Program... the Continuum of Care applications... the Single Family Premium Collection Subsystem-Upfront... the Uniform Physical Standards and Physical Inspection Requirements... and the FHA TOTAL Mortgage Scorecard. Where forms are involved, the texts can be found by searching for the relevant eight-digit OMB Number on the ICB Tracking System site.

$13.7 million in computer center grants

HUD announces grants to public housing authorities for computer centers (presumably from the fiscal 2006 appropriation, but the press release doesn't say). Seriously, computer access isn't a frill, it's a way of allowing low-income tenants onto the upper level of what's increasingly becoming a two-tier society with respect to information access. Without public help, tenants end up out of the loop -- unless they're unusually resourceful like this group in San Francisco.

Tuesday mix: recent technical guidance

Not much new on the housing front this inter-holiday work day -- but (lucky us!) there's quite a backlog of HUD notices:

- Housing Notice 06-13 gives renewed effect to the old Housing Notice 97-49, which is available in the HUDCLIPS notices and letters archive. This one is tough to parse, beginning with the title: "Backing-Out Trustee Sweep Savings before Calculating AAFs for Projects which Originally Received a Financial Adjustment Factor (FAF) and whose Bonds were Refunded." (whew.) Far as I can tell, it reduces the rent increases available to Section 8 projects funded with bonds that have been refunded since the original financing deal. Anyone with further elucidation to offer, please use the comments section below.

- Mortgagee Letter 06-30 clarifies HUD rules on when a lender can contract out the actual work of issuing mortgages.

- Public and Indian Housing Notice 06-41 renews and revises PIHN 04-18 on procedures for verifying Social Security and SSI benefits in public housing and many other rental assistance programs -- beginning with the aggravating news that "The SSA has taken the position that local SSA offices will no longer furnish verification of social security benefits via phone, mail, or fax for free." The notice tells housing managers to see if the tenant can extract a free income verification from Social Security, or if not, to get the information from HUD's own Enterprise Income Verification cross-checking database. There are instructions on proper responses to various kinds of EIV or SSA data mismatches, but it's still a worry what may happen with tenants who have low tolerances for paperwork.

- Mortgage Letter 06-31, unsurprisingly, provides increased "loss mitigation incentives" to keep FHA-insured lenders from sticking HUD with foreclosures.

- HUDCLIPS "What's New" also shows a recent rush of revised forms and Materials Releases, too many to list individually. (Materials releases are available within this HUDCLIPS directory, revised HUD forms over here.)

"...the utmost respect for Chairman Frank..."

Sec'y Jackson of HUD prepares to work collegially with the House Democratic majority.

HUD's quarterly regulatory waivers are out

Dull reading, maybe, but maybe a helpful indicator of who's needing to bend the rules where, and what kinds of bending are being allowed.

Many Americans' papers are not in order

From the Brennan Center for Justice comes a report saying many millions of U.S. citizens do not have documentary proof of their citizenship, nor current government-issued photo identity cards, and "many more -- primarily women -- do not have proof of citizenship with their current name." Unsurprisingly, the poorer people are, the less likely they are to have these things.

(Item via the Shriver Center's online Poverty Law News.)

HUD revises its Sec. 8 renewal guide

We have word from the law firm of Nixon Peabody that yesterday HUD released changes to its Section 8 Renewal Policy Guide. Nixon Peabody's update has a summary of the new material. Thus far I'm having trouble finding the revision itself online. The two places to look over the next few days will be HUDCLIPS "What's New" and the Office of Affordable Housing Preservation Sec. 8 page.

So do Sec. 602 home resales work?

HUDUSER has just posted equivocal results from a study of the Sec. 602 Non-Profit Disposition Program, which sells HUD-owned houses to local government and nonprofit groups that repair them for resale to low- and moderate-income households. Commissioned from Abt Associates and Optimal Solutions Group LLC, the report mainly considers how best to design a bigger, more comprehensive study of whether the program is doing any good. However, it does look at three local resale programs in Baltimore, Salt Lake City, and Rochester, NY. That part of the report holds out some hope for the "602 program" as a means to get HUD-owned houses back into the healthy housing stock of cities. However, it says the groups and agencies involved were worried about losing money, often finding they had to resell the houses for less than the HUD purchase price and the cost of repairs. In Rochester, managers of public/private 602 Program effort found that even without buying new kitchen appliances, they were spending an average of $60,000 on repairs per house and mainly selling the properties at a loss.

New hearing office and process at HUD

We have a Federal Register announcement this morning establishing an Office of Hearings and Appeals at HUD. It's a part of the Office of the Secretary, to consist of two divisions -- Office of Administrative Law Judges and Office of Appeals -- and here's the key paragraph on jurisdiction:

The Office of Administrative Law Judges shall have independent jurisdiction in deciding cases consistent with statutes and HUD regulations. The Office of Appeals shall have judicial review and jurisdiction of non-contract cases currently handled by the HUD Board of Contract Appeals in accordance with following regulatory sections in title 24 of the Code of Federal Regulations: Sec. Sec. 17.150 through 17.170 20.4(b), 24.947, 25.3 and 26.2, and consistent with applicable statutes, regulations, agreements, or such other matters as may be assigned by the Secretary of HUD or the Secretary's designee.

This sounds good. We'll have to ask around about the significance, but it sounds like a step toward making HUD's decisionmaking processes a little more formal, bringing them a little more solidly under the public eye.

Two more funding announcements

- HUD awarded another $9.67 million of its grant money for "family self-sufficiency" service coordinators to help tenants in subsidized housing. Presumably this would have been part of the fiscal 2006 appropriation, but no fiscal year is given in the announcement.

- HUD gave another stage of approval to $1.2 billion worth of Mississippi hurricane recovery plans, pretty much for homeowners and businesses.

HUD seeks housing listings for next crisis

This morning HUD posted and circulated a welcome appeal for housing listings to be used in the next emergency:

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is seeking to identify web-based rental housing locators interested in making their electronic listings available to the government during national emergencies. A lesson learned from hurricane Katrina was the Federal Government lacked a national inventory of available housing to accommodate evacuated disaster-affected personnel. This initiative is designed to help HUD understand the availability of housing and to better serve the citizen public during hurricanes, earthquakes and other similar disasters requiring mass evacuations.

The contact person is Charles_D._Moore@hud.gov, also reachable at 202-708-0614, ext. 4158. (NB a note on the intercept page when you click his email address says he's "not a HUD employee." A contractor, then?)

It's a great relief to see this appeal after the Katrina mess, in which private groups and local officials had to pick up the slack while for weeks HUD and FEMA gave confusing instructions to individual providers and seekers of housing. (see our coverage e.g. here and here and here).

A problem, however, is that I don't know if this announcement will be distributed in a way likely to reach the kinds of nonprofits, professional organizations, and state or local government offices that might be able to help most. The news went out by email today on HUD's procurement listserv, and it's posted online in the Chief Procurement Officer section of HUD's Web site, but not everybody checks those sources. Profiteering isn't exactly my concern -- the announcement does say, "This is not a procurement," and it does explain that the only benefit HUD would give a listing service during an emergency would be "additional visibility" -- but it's worrying that HUD seems to be putting out the word through its procurement channels, which reach private businesses, and not (or not yet) through the types of announcements that reach public housing administrators, subsidized landlords, or the general public. Accordingly, if you read this, it might be a public service to spread the word.

HUD might reopen some NOLA units

HUD still wants to demolish those four New Orleans housing projects, but there's news this week that some locked-out residents may be allowed to return to their homes temporarily.

[MORE 12/20: This morning's Times-Picayune adds details.]

A USDA appeal rights clarification

Any grant or loan recipient heading into a money dispute with USDA should probably take a look at today's final rule on the procedural importance of USDA's first demand letter, which it says "may serve as the basis for the recipient's appeal rights."

In other HUD awards today...

Today we have Assisted Living Conversion awards for fiscal 2006 under the SuperNOFA, totaling not quite $7.85 million.

We also have a formal Federal Register announcement today of the Service Coordinators in Multifamily Housing grants for fiscal 2006. Here, too, a correction is in order. Back in November, HUD published a Federal Register announcement describing $15.4 million worth of fiscal 2005 grants for service coordinators. It appeared around the same time as a HUD press release describing $12.1 million worth of grants for the same purpose. In a blog item at that time I suggested the FR publication and the press release somehow referred to the same grant decisions. Actually, it's now clear that the November press release was looking forward to the $12.1 million in fiscal 2006 grants that were not formally announced in the Federal Register until today.

A correction and apology re: Sec. 202 grants

I've stated several times that the Sec. 202 housing grant announcements appeared formally in the Federal Register before Secretary Jackson announced the Sec. 202 and Sec. 811 grants as part of a pre-election appearance. In fact I'm embarrassed to say that the Oct. 30 Federal Register announcement of Sec. 202 grants was for fiscal 2005. The fiscal 2006 grants under Sec. 202 only just appeared today.

The correct sequence of grant announcements under Secs. 202 and 811 was as follows:
- Oct. 30, 2006: Sec. 202 awards for fiscal 2005 appear in Federal Register.
- Oct. 31, 2006: Secretary Jackson announces fiscal 2006 awards for both Secs. 202 and 811 at an appearance with Rep. Nancy Johnson, R-Conn. An attachment to the press release describes the fiscal 2006 awards project by project.
- Nov. 17, 2006: Sec. 811 awards for fiscal 2005 appear in Federal Register.
- Dec. 4, 2006: Sec. 811 awards for fiscal 2006 appear in Federal Register.
- Dec. 19, 2006 (today): Sec. 202 awards for fiscal 2006 appear in Federal Register.

I have placed corrections in past items. Sorry if this mistake created any confusion.

"Exit tax" break headed for reintroduction

This week's National Low Income Housing Coalition Memo to Members notes Sen. Gordon Smith, R-OR, has said he will reintroduce "exit tax" legislation in the next Congress. The Memo says it would be similar to HR 3715, a bill expiring with Congress' current session. That bill would have granted a tax exemption for gains from the sale or exchange of multifamily housing to the extent the gain was attributable to depreciation, and only so long as the purchaser was a "preservation entity" agreeing to maintain affordability.

Another below-market BLM sale in Nevada

This time the purpose seems a bit different, but folks following Bureau of Land Management land transfers for affordable housing may be interested to see a different below-market land transfer in today's Federal Register. Today's sale, for 20% of the assessed market value, is of 10 acres to the city of Henderson to replace a truck stop with "an Urban Village with 1,900 condominium units, retail space, a 5,000-seat amphitheater, a fire station and a public park."

The project would appear to be locally controversial. Accusations of influence-peddling were made last summer.

Some intriguing bond statistics from the IRS

The IRS Fall 2006 Statistics of Income Bulletin includes a 39-page article on government bond issues (see also separate links to spreadsheet tables on the Bulletin's main Web page). IRS turnaround time being what it is, this study covers the tax years 2003 and 2004, which makes the news a bit stale, but this report still provides a rare comprehensive overview of states' decisions to use bond debt for housing and other purposes.

Start on Page 8 of the PDF for discussion of the private activity bond issues that can make such a difference in affordable housing. Housing highlights thereafter include the following:

- Tables on Page 12 show residential rental bonds (that is, multifamily housing bonds as distinct from single-family mortgage revenue bonds) added up to a relatively small $6.2 billion in new money and $9.7 billion altogether during 2003. The figures for 2004 are smaller: $5.6 billion in new money and $8.4 billion overall.

- A table on Page 16 gives volumes of private activity bonds by purpose in each of the top 15 bond-issuing states, showing among other things that the top 15 issuer states, considered by themselves, actually issued more bonds for rentals than for mortgages.

- Page 9 has a state-by-state table generically showing "New Money Long-Term Government bonds, by State of Issue, 2004." It helpfully ranks states both by absolute bond activity volume and by bond dollars issued per capita. Surprisingly, the states with the highest and lowest numbers of bond dollars per capita in 2004 were both in the sparsely populated inland West: New Mexico issued the top volume of $1,038 in bond dollars per resident, and Idaho issued the lowest volume, $129 per resident.

- A table on Page 14 narrows things down more helpfully for housing people: "New Money Long-Term Tax-Exempt Private Activity Bonds and Volume Cap, by State of Issue, 2003 and 2004." Alas, this table doesn't provide those handy rankings, but it does provide comparisons state by state of total bonds issued, amounts of private activity volume cap available to each state, and the often surprisingly small amounts of bonds subject to volume cap that were actually issued.

There's much more in the report. Go take a look if you have the time.

A new tax credit administrator in Texas

Audrey Martin has moved up within TDHCA to become Texas' new Housing Tax Credit Program Administrator.

Need to Know

Look for this headline monthly. We'll be using it to list recent regulatory developments and upcoming deadlines, as mentioned in the monthly Washington Briefs column in the print version of Affordable Housing Finance.

Some upcoming comment deadlines on federal rules and forms:
• Dec. 18: Indian Housing Block Grant minimum grants.
• Dec. 20: The HUD Utility Allowance Adjustments process
• Dec. 26: Four HUD forms for setting maintenance wages per prevailing rates
• Dec. 29: The HUD-92458 rent increase request
• Jan. 2, 2007: A proposed Bureau of Indian Affairs rule on inheritance, title, and sale rights to tribal trust lands
• Jan. 5, 2007: Several New Markets Tax Credit administrative processes
• Jan. 17, 2007: IRS Notice 2006-96 on property donation appraisals
• Jan. 19, 2007: A Department of Agriculture survey on "faith-based" rural housing
• Jan. 31, 2007: Treasury reporting rules for "material advisors" in tax credit transactions (both final and proposed rules are in the Nov. 2 Federal Register)

Other regulatory news:
• HUD issued a major final rule on demolition and disposition of public housing
projects and revised its CPD Handbook 1378 on subsidized property purchases that displace tenants.
• HUD made a dozen grant announcements, mostly pre-election, notably over $633 million in Sec. 202 and Sec. 811 supportive housing grants.
• HUD issued Labor Relations Letter 2006-02 on confidentiality in labor investigations.
• The nonprofit Housing Assistance Council found federal data saying Sec. 515 in fiscal 2006 allowed 2,189 housing units out of the program through prepayments and built just 486 new units.
• HUD issued new rules and waivers for CDBG-administered hurricane relief
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency raised disaster grant levels
• HUDUSER.org is offering free reports on "best practices" for the administrative and permitting side of affordable housing rehabilitation.
• An IRS non-precedential Private Letter Ruling, No. 200645014, granted another exception to the 10-year holding rule for an acquisition/rehab using low-income housing tax credits.

HUD seeks smart HMIS data users

HUD's Office of Special Needs Assistance Programs (SNAPs) is looking for presenters at a conference to be held next April in New Orleans "to facilitate peer-to-peer learning between communities who can demonstrate advanced uses of homeless data at the local level for Continuum of Care planning, management (including program evaluation), or decision making." Application materials were distributed by the listserv and I'm not sure if they're available online, but the contact seems to be Michelle Hayes of Cloudburst Consulting Group, email MLH[at]cloudburstgroup.com or phone (202)253-2346. Applications are due next Wednesday, December 20.

Incidentally, as I suppose you'll know if you fit the above description, the "HMIS" homeless database program has morphed from "Homeless Management Information System" to "Homeless Management Information Strategies." Maybe because some people heard a bit of an Orwellian ring in the original name?

Grounds for performance anxiety at HUD?

The folks at HUDUSER have posted a series of reports on "Partner Satisfaction with HUD's Performance," which turns out to mean they asked various parties what they thought of working with HUD, including local mayors, nonprofit managers, public housing directors, and owners of multifamily properties receiving HUD subsidies or insurance. The recent reports are for surveys conducted in 2005. Within these, the multifamily property owners' results show survey response rates were between 56% and 66% in various subcategories. Of those who responded, levels of satisfaction with HUD in general were pretty steady compared with a 2001 survey, with favorable results among 76% of Sec. 202/811 owners, 64% of other owners receiving HUD assistance, and 62% of owners with HUD insurance. However, satisfaction with "the way HUD runs the programs with which they dealt" declined from 78% to 70% among owners of 202/811 properties. Complaints varied, but they kept returning to requests for clearer, quicker decisionmaking and guidance. For more details see Page 9 of the results document.

Sadly for those of us who try to reach multifamily property owners and developers online, the survey also found "E-mail is not an effective method of communicating with many HUD-insured owners; nearly one-half either said they do not use e-mail or described it as not too effective or not effective at all." It also reported having trouble getting the survey participants interested in HUD's listservs, which is a pity as some of them provide genuinely useful technical information.

Changes at the CDFI Coalition

Jennifer Vasiloff is leaving the CDFI Coalition, which is accordingly seeking applicants for its Executive Director position. This and more in the group's most recent newsletter, including a handy clip 'n' save calendar of 2007 events involving the CDFI Fund programs.

Finally, a look at HUD's rulemaking plans

OK, here's at least the HUD part of my promised look at the semiannual regulatory agendas that the federal agencies posted on Monday. Later I'll try and get to some of the other agencies' plans to change regulations affecting affordable rental housing. For now the following looks at HUD's own regulatory agenda (excluding OFHEO and the Federal Housing Finance Board) and HUD's part of the government-wide "Regulatory Plan."

I've already discussed Item #1525, a proposal championed by former General Counsel Keith Gottfried that would allow regulated parties to request "no-action" letters and other written guidance a la SEC.

Private developers of affordable housing may also want to look at these upcoming proposed rules:
- #1522 says they'll begin around April 2007 to amend HUD's rules on nondiscrimination in federally funded activities. Doesn't say how.
- #1523 says they'll "refine" rules on determining incomes and rents in public and assisted housing, starting in February.
- #1527 would change rules on FOIA disclosure of private business information submitted to HUD, starting in January.
- #1531 would amend HUD's procedures in matters before administrative law judges, starting in April.
- #1534 would "streamline" HUD's environmental reviews, starting any day now.
- #1535 would revise CHDO performance measures in the HOME program starting in June.
- #1541 says rather generically that HUD has a "long-term" plan to standardize and centralize all its requirements for grants and other financial assistance.
- #1546 would change the terms of multifamily property owners' rights to seek technical review of HUD's work when HUD assesses a building's physical condition.
- #1547 would "revise HUD's rules on previous participation filings." This sounds like HUD's response to all the fuss last summer over the HUD-2530 Previous Participation Certificate's rocky transition from paper to electronic format.
- #1550 would allow properties HUD has had on the market for six months to be sold to local governments for $1 plus closing costs.
- #1552 would allow some manufactured homes to be insured as condominiums.
- #1553 would revise rules on Sec. 202 direct loan refinancing in combination with Section 8.
- #1589 would update rules on disability accommodations in new construction.
- #1595 would "streamline" the public housing authorities' required plans.
- #1596 would amend public housing regulations to protect victims of domestic abuse and stalking under the Violence Against Women Act.
- #1598 would "clarify" that housing authorities can buy properties for homeownership.
- #1599 would "streamline" the review of mixed finance applications.
- #1600 sounds like a catchall of requirements affecting housing authorities' properties, ranging from lead paint removal to staff wage rates.
- #1602 would let Section 8 homeownership vouchers be used even to buy properties that have not yet started construction (!).
- #1603 says pretty generally that it would "streamline" the Section 8 voucher program and the Section 8 Management Assessment Program (SEMAP).
- #1604 "would establish rent levels for Project-Based Unit Projects with tax credit [sic] inside and outside of Qualified Census Tracts." I think this must be a HUD effort to straighten out the foofaraw we had last November through March over a regulation that (unintentionally as far as we know) changed the rent rates in projects that combine Section 8 assistance, low-income housing tax credits (LIHTC), and special extra tax credits due to location in a Qualified Census Tract.
- #1605 would let housing authorities use either capital or operating funds for payments such as debt service.
- #1606 would "clarify" that Indian Housing Block Grants can be used to pay rental assistance in LIHTC projects.
- #1607 and #1608 would further amend the Indian Housing Block Grant rules.


HUD chose three regulatory proposals to represent its intentions for the next six months in the Regulatory Plan:
- A future proposed rule, #58 in the Plan, would allow FHA insurance for a larger category of manufactured houses on permanent foundations.
- #59 would create a new Capital Fund Program to replace many existing rules for building or renovating public housing.
- #60 would revise the Public Housing Assessment System monitoring process.

In this review I've skipped most of the rulemaking processes that are already formally started, but you may want to know about a few long-running rulemakings that are expected to start moving again in early 2006: #1556, Mark-to-Market regs; #1562, tenant protections in renewals of expiring Section 8 project-based contracts, and #1583, new Supportive Housing Program regs. That last rulemaking process hasn't moved since July 20, 2004 so some folks may have forgotten about it. Best keep an eye open.

Thursday mix: finance regs and a study

- OFHEO has posted a final rule amending its risk-based capital regulation.

- A few days ago, three of the federal financial regulators posted a guidance document warning against concentrating investments in commercial real estate. Now the Office of Thrift Supervision has posted its own separate version.

- HUDUSER has posted a report with the rather old-fashioned title, "Effects of Housing Vouchers on Welfare Families." The subject is actually a little narrower than the title suggests: the report is an evaluation of the housing vouchers issued as part of the so-called "welfare to work" program begun in 1999. The report's authors are mainly outside experts headed by Abt Associates, but there's an introduction by Dr. Darlene Williams, Assistant HUD Secretary for Policy Development and Research. Conclusions are hard to dig out of the report -- the first thing like a summary of findings starts on p. 15 of the PDF -- but it looks like the findings were mostly favorable: families with vouchers were living in a bigger variety of neighborhoods, with more living space per person and less risk of homelessness, able to keep kids in school more and spend more of their household budgets on food. There was a slight decline in employment and earnings during voucher recipients' first years, but not by much, and the study did find that the quality of the housing didn't improve when it came to things like plumbing problems. Still, amid all the harm and uncertainty the "welfare to work" program did inflict on poor households, this sounds like it might have been one of the bright spots.

Yet more changes at Treasury

Fiscal Assistant Secretary Don Hammond resigns. What's going on over there?

"An 85-page thunderbolt"

FindLaw columnist and law professor Adam Scales takes a detailed, mainly unfavorable look at the recent In Re Katrina Canal Breaches decision. He argues it unfairly saddled insurance companies with a burden to pay for damage despite flood coverage exclusions in their policies.

A full-year continuing resolution?

HAC News reports there's talk from the Senate Democratic leadership about freezing all federal spending at 2006 levels through 2007, presumably in order to get back on schedule for the following year.

The newsletter also has word of a redrafted rural housing preservation bill with "less emphasis on prepayment and vouchers than H.R. 5039... and a very strong revitalization program."

Damned if he does, jailed if he doesn't?

San Francisco's housing authority director could face jail if he doesn't pay some judgments that HUD is telling him may not be paid with federal money.

Gottfried's pet proposal may survive after all

I'll get to a more general rundown on Monday's regulatory agenda publications soon, but first I wanted to note one item separately: it looks like a proposal for "no-action letter" legal determinations that was a favorite project of HUD's recently former General Counsel Keith Gottfried is now likely to outlast him at the agency.

Since Gottfried seems to have left on less than happy terms, his proposals could have sunk without a trace -- but now, whaddayaknow, take a look at HUD's six-month regulatory agenda as published this past Monday. Item #1525, captioned "Access to Compliance Guidance," is a plan to publish a proposed rule next April that sounds familiar:

This rule would establish new regulations designed to assist HUD program participants and regulated entities in their compliance with HUD statutes and regulations by providing, in certain circumstances, advance informal legal guidance on matters that may otherwise lead to enforcement actions. Specifically, the regulations would offer participants in HUD programs, including HUD's assistance programs (all forms of assistance) and loan insurance and guarantee programs, and entities regulated under statutes administered by HUD, such as the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, the opportunity, under specified conditions, to seek informal legal guidance in the form of interpretative letters or no-action letters (compliance guidance) from HUD.

If you're wondering what this is about, probably the easiest place to catch up is at Bank Lawyer's Blog by Kevin Funnell. Kevin wove some of the posts from this space into a good detailed summary of the buzz surrounding Gottfried's departure from HUD. He gives an introduction there to a proposal Gottfried was making for a system of "no-action letters" that would allow regulated parties to check the agency's position in advance before trying something original that would call for a new interpretation of the rules. (Gottfried explained the proposal himself on Pages 13 and 14 of this speech given to NAHRO last summer.) As Kevin has pointed out (jocularly, he insists), a no-action letter is something a business lawyer has to love because it's a way to bill plenty of hours and also prevent a sneaky-minded client from getting mixed up in outright lawbreaking. Speaking as an old welfare lawyer myself, I'll add that it's also something an advocate for the pawns in the system has to love, because it's one more step toward regulatory transparency. Of course defining the rules consistently, in detail, for everyone to see, doesn't prevent decisions from sometimes being unfair to people without much power -- but if there is going to be unfairness, at least more of it has to happen out in the open, so advocates can talk specifics instead of wasting their time trying to nail jelly to the wall. It would be great, for example, if a consumer lawyer hearing about a new mortgage company dodge could see if it's mentioned in an index of HUD no-action letters on the subject, comparable to this one over at the SEC. For that matter it sounds like a legal aid lawyer might now become able to request a definite opinion on a rule that appeared to be inconsistently enforced at different public housing projects. Really, seriously, what's not to like?

Major changing of the guard at Treasury

Five new officials sworn in.

BLM backs affordable housing in Vegas area

After years of buildup, we have a Federal Register notice today saying the Bureau of Land Management finally intends to help affordable housing under a special clause in the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act. (For more detail start here.) Specifically, BLM intends to sell five acres of public land to Clark County for affordable housing at less than the market rate. Considerably less: looks like they'll be getting an appraised value of $3 million for just under $200,000. Not so shabby at all.

This is a breakthrough for land-pinched affordable housing developers in the Las Vegas area, where prices have been rising for land sold at BLM's market-rate land auctions.

The proposal is open for comment until January 26, 2007.

Tuesday mix: new places to be poor

- The NLIHC Memo to Members confirms that, yes, the GSEs bill died with the adjournment of the 109th Congress... and, possibly more interesting, it relays news from Brookings that, quite predictably, there are now more poor Americans in suburbs than in center cities. Mark my words, our major cities are gonna end up like Paris, with beautiful sterile expensive theme parks in their historic centers and all the unhappiness pushed to their anonymous peripheries.

- The IRS posted temporary regulations today interpreting the kindly if scanty $500 tax deduction for taxpayers who personally took displaced persons into their homes after Hurricane Katrina. There's a related proposed rule as well.

- Three banking regulators -- OCC, the Federal Reserve, and the FDIC -- went in together on a final guidance document telling institutions where to stop with "concentrations" of commercial real estate loans among their investments.

- There's an awkwardly written notice here requesting comment on the use of "multi-race" ethnic identities in the data used to hand out Indian Housing Block Grants.

Yes, another continuing resolution

This one's good until February 15. Details -- of which there aren't many, and none affecting housing that I can see -- are at the top of the THOMAS appropriations boxscore page.

Farther "out of reach" than ever

The National Low Income Housing Coalition's annual report on rental housing costs, "Out of Reach," is available today, with news of another increase in the nationwide "housing wage" -- the wage necessary to pay just 30% of one's income in rent for a two-bedroom unit. It's now $16.31 per hour, they say, compared with $15.78 per hour last year. They add that the median hourly wage in the United States is $15 -- that's $13 counting only renters -- and minimum wage is $5.15 per hour.

How to count homeless people

In preparation for the annual January count, HUD has two publications, prepared by Abt Associates, on methods and considerations for local officials preparing to figure out how many homeless neighbors they have. Helpfully, there's a special guide to counting homeless people outside shelters plus a separate guide to counting shelter users. These documents rather nicely acknowledge that people sleep in a very many places other than in conventional housing, in shelters, or flat on the pavement. Apart from serving their immediate purpose helping the survey, they make useful background reading on the general subject of homelessness.

A new stormworthy migrant housing design

HUD has endorsed and publicized a new design for a low-cost two-bedroom housing unit designed to house up to five migrant farmworkers and withstand a Category 4 hurricane. It's hard to get details on the design, but any serious inquiries might start with the hosts of the model house, which is at the Florida Ag Expo, on the campus of the University of Florida Institute of Food and Agriculture Sciences Research.

Some Florida growers seem to be involved in this project, which is nice to hear since there's rarely enough purpose-built migrant housing to go around during busy parts of the farming year, and farmworkers often end up having to live in less pleasant places.

It's Semiannual Agenda day

The federal agencies have published their Semiannual Agendas in today's Federal Register -- table of contents here. It's always useful to review these for early warning of new rulemaking plans that haven't been otherwise announced.

Key for affordable housing will be the agendas for HUD itself, the Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight Office, the Federal Housing Finance Board, the Department of Agriculture (for rural housing) the Treasury Department (both IRS and Community Development Financial Institutions Fund sections), and if you're feeling energetic, maybe folks like the Dept. of Labor, the VA, and the Dept. of Health and Human Services in the welfare and rehab types of programs.

An attempt at digesting these will follow a bit later.

[...forgot to mention, a review isn't complete unless you scroll down to the "Regulatory Information Service Center" heading and read the "Regulatory Plan" for all agencies as well as the individual agencies' "Regulatory Agendas."]

Treasury Secretary at OTS housing forum

Treasury Sec'y Paulison, at the National Housing Forum of the Office of Thrift Supervision, discussed his impending visit to China and the joys of increasing the nationwide volume of mortgage debt. He acknowledged, "Our rate of growth for the last several years, particularly in the housing industry, had not been sustainable. As you all know, we have had a correction in the housing industry and we are in the process of transitioning to a more sustainable growth rate." He didn't mention renters.

New reports of an Abramoff-HUD connection

A fresh story in the McClatchy papers based on a more careful look at documents released earlier this fall, with material about HUD, Jack Abramoff, his former firm of Greenberg Traurig, former HUD Secretary Mel Martinez, and the Saginaw Chippewa tribe.

Henry Cisneros talks housing again

On Thursday former HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros told a National League of Cities conference that cities should approach local affordable housing policy comprehensively and with respect for its importance: "Housing is the building block of a community. The quality of housing has everything to do with the quality of our neighborhoods and our quality of life."

The League of Cities also released a survey of municipal housing directors with a fair number of unhappy responses, some of them calling for state and federal governments to spend more on housing, especially to serve "working families."

(By the way, you ever think how strange it is to use the political phrase "working families" to mean the households of low-wage breadwinners? I mean, we don't believe in child labor any more, and many people with high incomes and families do also work -- so why this phrase? Would guess it's because most Americans are reluctant to call themselves "working-class," but a label is sometimes needed to discuss the very many households without commas in their checkbooks.)

For your next housing mission abroad

HUDUSER has thoughtfully posted French, Spanish and Russian editions of its recent report, "Evolution of the U.S. Housing Finance System: A Historical Survey and Lessons for Emerging Mortgage Markets." Probably quite useful should you wish to visit the complexities of U.S. housing subsidy leveraging on our international neighbors. Since there's also an English-language edition to compare, these translations look even more useful for brushing up on technical terminology in any of the three languages, should you happen to be planning an international business trip.

Use Sec. 8 subsidies for public housing?

Analyst David Smith of Recap Advisors wonders, what about swapping subsidies to give public housing managers the greater freedom of Section 8 landlords?

Rural business grants available

For Rural Business Opportunity Grants of up to $50,000 per application, filing is due January 31, 2007 in some categories and March 30 in others.

A separate notice today advises applicants under the Rural Economic Development Loan And Grant program that maximum grants in fiscal 2007 will be $300,000.

NOLA demolitions move a step closer

The HUD official running the Housing Authority of New Orleans approved the four demolitions of public housing complexes yesterday. The pending lawsuit, however, is still holding off the proposal.

Thursday mix: homeownership can hurt

- The Times Daily in Florence, Alabama reports on subprime loan defaults starting to bite in poor and minority neighborhoods.

- HUD's public/private Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH) is lining up permission for a survey of innovation among makers of homebuilding products.

- HUDUSER posted a report this fall that appears to be more than a year old, but the topic is still awfully current: "Recent House Price Trends And Homeownership Affordability."

A $6.3b earnings restatement from Fannie

Yes, that's billion with a "b." The New York Times has the story, available with free registration. Fannie Mae's own filings and press release are at the top of its home page.

GAO reports more hurricane boondoggles

A prepared text from Senate Homeland Security Committee testimony digs a little farther into FEMA.

Wednesday regulatory mix: NMTC and more

- Today we have formal publication of the New Markets Tax Credit Notice of Allocation Availability. The Treasury Dep't. declared the competition open on Monday.

- HUD holds a holiday "sales event" with special incentives to buy its repo'd single-family houses.

- If I'm reading this notice right, it says that if a public housing authority wants to do the equivalent of refinancing its property, it now has to ask a different HUD official for permission: the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Office of Public Housing Investments. Per the PIH staff directory this official is Dominique Blom.

Ryan White rules would limit aid per person

An HIV/AIDS health program that covers some emergency housing is pretty definitely planning to limit aid per person to 24 months, which would be consistent with HUD policy in similar programs. Today's policy announcement is from the Health Resources and Services Administration, affecting money in the Ryan White CARE Act that can pay for "short-term and emergency housing assistance." Formally, this looks like it ought to be a proposed rule, but it's captioned as a "Notice of opportunity to provide written comments," with comments due Feb. 5, 2007 and the policy set to take effect March 1, 2007 -- presumably unless the comments talk them out of it.

Today's notice says it's responding to an Inspector General audit on the program but I can't quite tell which one -- maybe one of these? It would be helpful to know what kind of trouble the Inspector General saw in the existing practices. Somehow it doesn't seem too terrible to keep a needy person housed for a long period instead of a short one.

Trouble in Roanoke

There's a lot of local news reporting this week on trouble at the Roanoke Redevelopment and Housing Authority. Here's a sample.... Here, too. The gist is that HUD wants almost $2 million of its money back.

Unfortunately the HUD audit that led to the current foofaraw doesn't appear to be posted online yet. It should eventually appear here.

Texas' QAP is final.

The freshly finalized and signed Qualified Allocation Plan governing Texas low-income housing tax credits is here. So is a requirement that anyone wanting to apply for the credits in 2007 needs to have requested an official list of neighborhood organizations in the area of the proposed project.

Also, North Carolina's preliminary application is complete and available here, but better use a recent version of Internet Explorer if you want to read it.

A preservation catalog and more from NLIHC

The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) has published the first installments of a "preservation catalog" that it's hoped could become a nationwide inventory of subsidized rental projects. The catalog exists to point out where projects are in danger of losing the subsidy agreements that keep their rents affordable. NLIHC has posted a presentation about the project, including key data gathered thus far. The catalog itself is also available in its pilot version, which at present only covers D.C. and Florida. Any developers seeking preservation deals in those two areas will definitely want to look through the 69 dense pages of specific project-by-project information.

This week's Memo to Members agrees with other publications that Congress probably won't pass either appropriations bills or GSE legislation before the new year... calls on the current administration to fill vacancies at the top of the Census Bureau... and notes Sen. Landrieu has introduced S. 4071 to push back the "placed in service" deadline for projects receiving the GO Zone type of low-income housing tax credits. The bill would extend the deadline all the way to 2010.

By the way, NLIHC has reorganized its Web site. New features include an archive of hurricane recovery materials. Unfortunately, this blog's past links to individual Memo to Members editions within the site don't seem to be working at present. Past Memo to Members issues, going back to 1997, are now archived here.

Two Treasury nominees up, a third on deck

A Senate Finance Committee group nomination hearing today includes nominees Anthony Ryan, to be Assistant Treasury Secretary for Financial Markets, and Phillip Swagel to be Assistant Treasury Secretary for Economic Policy.

You may be able to get a recording of the hearing in RealAudio here.

Last week we had another nomination: Matthew Abbott, to be Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary for Federal Finance.

Congress goes back to work, sort of

The Washington Post says Congress will be back at work today, but probably not on appropriations bills. From the sounds of it, not on much else affecting housing either, unless you count tax cuts.

New Markets Tax Credit competition opens

The CDFI Fund declared its fifth new Markets Tax Credit competition open today, with some $3.9 billion in investment available. Materials at the CDFI Fund site include the schedule for a series of local application workshops starting today. New applications are due February 28, 2007 and reporting deadlines for most existing allocatees (not fourth-round GO Zone allocatees) fall on February 15.

The CDFI Fund documents say the Notice of Allocation Availability for the 2007 round was expected to be published by December 1, 2006, but it hasn't appeared in the Federal Register yet. Any day now, I'm sure.

New energy standards for federal buildings

New federal residential buildings are included under a new Department of Energy interim rule revising energy efficiency standards, effective of January 3, 2007. Comments are due February 2, 2007.

Correction to the "material advisor" rules

There's a correction in today's (Dec. 4) Federal Register to one of the recent proposed rules on IRS "material advisor" reporting responsibilities. (These do affect some people who work with housing tax credits.) In the proposed rule interpreting Sec. 6111, the phrase "tax structure or tax aspects" is changed to to "tax treatment or tax structure."

Finally, the Sec. 811 award announcements

Minor bit of suspense resolved today: we now have the official Federal Register edition of the Sec. 811 disability housing grant award list for 2006, worth more than $121 million. Its sister program, Sec. 202 for seniors, published an official grant list back on October 30, and HUD's Secretary Jackson announced both grants October 31, while the online press release at that time attached a document with more helpfully detailed award profiles than in the Federal Register.

...so that leaves us to wonder why it took an extra month to get the official record published on the Sec. 811 grants. Anyone want to see if there are differences between today's award list and the October 31 press release attachment?

[CORRECTION: The October 30 Sec. 202 announcement was also for fiscal 2005. The Fiscal 2006 Sec. 202 awards were published Dec. 19, 2006, here.]

IRS/SSA Reporter winter issue published

There's some material on nonprofits' employment tax duties and assorted other helpfulness in the new issue of the IRS/SSA Reporter. Unfortunately it's written in the oversimplifying kiddytalk that passes for "plain language," but you still might find something useful there.

Biloxi bureaucracy finger-pointing

So they're arguing now about whether the slow distribution of federal post-hurricane homeowners' grants can be blamed on federal audits or otherwise.

The homeownership society comes to Ghana

Sec'y Jackson of HUD lent his presence to the recent ceremonial opening of a new mortgage lending institution in Ghana. The idea is to make possible more middle-class home purchases through U.S.-style mortgage borrowing.

"All over but the shouting"?

One very angry Times-Picayune column suggests HUD is not interested in hearing from opponents of its planned New Orleans public housing demolitions.

GAO takes a critical look at credit unions

Today's crop of GAO reports includes two items on credit unions -- their governance, executive salaries, and (surprisingly poor) record of serving low- and moderate-income neighbors. There's some ammunition here for those who argue credit unions ought to be subject to the Community Reinvestment Act like ordinary banks.

Also today, there's a copy of a presentation by Comptroller General David Walker as part of a "fiscal wake-up tour." Some startling figures, such as a graph showing 1966 military spending at 43% of the national total, compared with a tentative 20% in 2006.