HUD

Admin Fee Special Fee Applications

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

HUD’s Financial Management Division sent out an email with reminders for application deadlines for certain administrative fee special fees. Additional explanations of the categories can be found in Notice PIH 2021-10 on the implementation of the Housing Choice Voucher program in 2021. Today is the last day for certain categories!

CategoryDue Date
HUD-VASH Special Fees (HUD-VASH)Friday, May 14, 2021
Family Unification Program Special Fees (FUP)Friday, May 14, 2021
Disaster Related Special FeesFriday, October 29, 2021
Special Fees under The Secretary’s DiscretionFriday, October 29, 2021

HUD Creates Emergency Housing Vouchers Website

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

HUD has created an Emergency Housing Vouchers website. Emergency Housing Vouchers (EHVs) were created by the American Rescue Plan and provide 70,000 vouchers for people experiencing or at-risk of homelessness, fleeing domestic violence and other categories, or who people who are at a high-risk of housing instability. The website currently includes the following:

The website will also host FAQ documents on EHVs in the near future.

The website can be found here.

HUD Publishes Details on New Emergency Housing Vouchers

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

As part of the American Rescue Plan, Congress allocated $5 billion in funding for Emergency Housing Vouchers. On May 5, 2021, HUD published PIH 2021-15 titled “Emergency Housing Vouchers – Operating Requirements.” HUD is using a portion of that funding to allocate 70,000 vouchers to PHAs. The vouchers are to assist families that are experiencing homelessness (or at risk of homelessness); attempting to flee, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking or human trafficking; or were recently homeless and for whom providing rental assistance will prevent the family’s homelessness or having high risk of housing instability.

For more information about the vouchers, please join us for a webinar on Thursday, May 13: “Emergency Housing Vouchers – What You Need to Know!“

The notice lays out the procedures and requirements of receiving and administering the emergency housing vouchers (EHVs). It states operating requirements; allocation of administrative and other support services fees; the housing assistance payments (HAP) funding renewal process; family eligibility requirements; EHV waivers; the EHV recapture and redistribution procedures; and the prohibition on the reissuance of turnover of EHVs after Sept. 30, 2023.

In structuring this program, HUD reached out to industry groups to ask for feedback. NAHRO provided comments on how the program should be structured. We are pleased that much of NAHRO’s feedback was incorporated into this notice including creating a services fee, using enhanced payment standards, allowing security deposit assistance, allowing utility deposit assistance, allowing rental application assistance, allowing the use of landlord incentives, allowing purchasing essential household items (e.g., furniture), allowing initial self-certification of certain information, and using certain other flexibilities.

NAHRO members will receive additional information in the near future.

The full notice can be found here.

Mobility Demonstration PHAs selected

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

In a press release, HUD has selected PHAs to participate in its new mobility demonstration. The mobility demonstration serves as a research evaluation to demonstrate the efficacy of a bundle of mobility-related interventions (i.e., services offered to families that help remove barriers moving to areas of opportunity). Recent research has shown that moving to areas of opportunity has positive impacts on health and the future lifetime earnings of children.

Program participants will be divided into three groups: a control group; a treatment group which receives comprehensive mobility-related services; and a second treatment group which receives selected mobility related-services. The Department, PHAs, and researchers will then evaluate the efficacy and cost of the bundles of mobility-related services provided.

The PHAs selected for the demonstration can be found below.

PHA CodePHA NameTotal Mobility-related Services AwardTotal Vouchers AwardedTotal Voucher Funding Awarded
NY041Rochester Housing Authority$4,089,54074$724,106
NY110New York Housing Preservation and Development$4,013,10074$1,501,480
MN002Minneapolis Public Housing Authority (Lead PHA)$4,013,10037$637,341
MN163Metropolitan HRAPartner to MN00237$585,649
CA004Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles$4,013,10037$812,372
CA002Housing Authority of the County of Los AngelesPartner to CA00437$761,339
PA006Allegheny County Housing Authority$4,089,54056$565,805
PA001Housing Authority of PittsburghPartner to PA00618$249,419
OH003Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority$4,089,54074$881,419
LA001Housing Authority of New Orleans$4,089,54074$1,114,333
PA046Housing Authority of Chester County$3,461,85018$249,803
PA007Chester Housing AuthorityPartner to PA04656$803,120
TN005Metropolitan Housing and Redevelopment$4,013,10074$971,554
Total$35,872,410666$9,857,740
Taken from https://www.hud.gov/press/press_releases_media_advisories/HUD_No_21_076.

The Department’s full press release can be found here.

2021 HCV Implementation Webinar Added to Youtube

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has uploaded their 2021 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Implementation webinar. This presentation focuses on Notice PIH 2021-10 and discusses how the funding for the voucher program in 2021 will be implemented along with key deadlines for additional funding (e.g., housing assistance payment [HAP] set-aside funding and special administrative fees).

The video can be found here or below.

Landlord Strategy Guidebook for PHAs Updated

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has updated their Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Landlord Strategy Guidebook for PHAs. New chapters have been posted on monetary incentives and reimbursement funds, inspections, matching local rental markets, and partnerships. The guidebook provides suggestions and ideas for PHAs looking to recruit new landlords and retain current landlords to the HCV program.

The guidebook has the following chapters:

The Department’s HCV Landlord Resources webpage can be found here.

The full HCV Landlord Strategy Guidebook for PHAs can be found here.

HUD Updates HCV Dashboard

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

The Department has updated the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) dashboard. The HCV dashboard presents visualizations of HCV program statistics based on most recently available data taken from, among other places, the Voucher Management System (VMS). The updated dashboard now includes pages on leasing changes, percentages of HCV programs devoted to special purpose vouchers, leasing potential, project-based voucher portfolios, comparing budget and reserves between two programs, and comparing leasing and per unit cost (PUC) between two programs.

The dashboard shows data both in the national aggregate and by individual PHA.

In addition, the Department has also updated the “HCV Dashboard User Guide & Data Dictionary.”

Finally, the Department has posted a YouTube video discussing and explaining the expansion.

The HCV Data Dashboard can be found here.

HUD Posts CY 2021 Admin. Fee Rates

~ Tushar Gurjal ~ Leave a comment

Earlier today, HUD posted to its Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) website, the HCV administrative fee rates. These rates determine the amount of administrative fee a HCV program receives from HUD. There are two rates. The second rate applies after the first 7,200 unit months.

HUD Restarts Inspections in June

~ Georgi Banna ~ Leave a comment

On April 23, HUD announced that the department plans to begin inspections for public housing and project-based rental assistance (PBRA) properties starting June 1. HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge noted that HUD “must take steps to ensure the whole health and well-being of the households we serve—including the conditions and quality of housing. We look forward to working with residents to ensure safe and successful inspections.”.

HUD will focus on properties that are considered “high priority” – those that have not been inspected for a significant amount of time or those that have failed their last inspection. Most of the PHA properties on HUD’s high priority inspection list have inspection scores below 60. HUD will also begin inspecting agencies participating in the National Standards for the Physical Inspection of Real Estate (NSPIRE) Demonstration. HUD will inform PHAs if any of their properties fall on the list of targeted inspections for 2021 on Monday, April 26. HUD will further provide notice to PHAs and owners 28 days before any inspection takes place at a property. HUD inspections will include enhanced safety protocols as established by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and HUD has entered a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to allow contracted inspectors to access COVID-19 vaccinations through the Department of Veteran’s Affairs, if they inspector so chooses.

If a resident does not feel comfortable with an inspector entering their unit, the resident may opt out from the inspection. In those instances, another unit will be selected for an inspection.

HUD will not be issuing inspection scores to PHAs in 2021 unless the agency specifically asks for one. Rather, inspectors will only be looking for life threatening deficiencies on the property. Life threatening deficiencies must be fixed within 24 hours of the inspection. HUD will be relying on NSPIRE standards to determine what constitutes a life-threatening deficiency. HUD recently posted an NSPIRE Life-Threatening Deficiencies fact sheet here. Multifamily properties will be inspected using UPCS and the inspections will be scored.

HUD will no longer be using the heat-map created last fall to determine which coronavirus hot-spots in the country to avoid. Rather, HUD will be inspecting units in all parts of the country, although attention will be paid to places that are seeing upticks in their COVID-19 case numbers.

HUD’s announcement can be found here.

2019 Public Charge Rule No Longer Applicable

~ Georgi Banna ~ Leave a comment

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced they will no longer defend the 2019 Public Charge rule and have withdrawn their appeal of an Illinois court decision invalidating the 2019 Public Charge rule. The result of DHS’s action is that the court’s decision striking down the 2019 Public Charge rule will become final and the previous 1999 interim field guidance (the immediate past policy) will apply.

Under the 1999 interim field guidance, DHS will not consider a person’s receipt of Medicaid (except for Medicaid for long-term institutionalization), public housing, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits as part of the public charge inadmissibility determination.  In addition, medical treatment or preventive services for COVID-19, including vaccines, will not be considered for public charge purposes.

DHS Statement on Litigation Related to the Public Charge Ground of Inadmissibility, March 9, 2021

DHS has pre-published a final rule, Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds; Implementation of Vacatur, that removes the 2019 Public Charge rule text from the Federal Register. The rule will take affect when published which is scheduled for March 15, 2021.