The White House’s Rental Policy Working Group (a joint effort between the White House, HUD, the IRS and USDA RD) has issued its preliminary administrative alignment recommendations. NCAHMA’s staff has worked closely with representatives from the White House, HUD, USDA and the IRS providing input at numerous meetings over the past two years as part of these efforts and have pushed diligently to raise the profile of NCAHMA and our standards.
NCAHMA urges our members and interested parties to review all of the following documents but especially the section on market studies. NCAHMA will be submitting additional comments over the next several weeks and we recommend you send us your feedback and thoughts as soon as possible to tamdur@housingonline.com.
The analysis and recommendations are very positive towards NCAHMA and our work product. Its is a strong endorsement of all the work we have done over the last 10 years and I think they are a great step forward and provide ground further collaboration with our state and federal partners to improve the market study process. Excerpted below are the two primary recommendations in the document:
- Using HUD-MF Multifamily Accelerated Processing Guide (MAP Guide) market study guidelines as the starting point for alignment efforts, given the fact that HUD-MF has recently completed a stakeholder feedback process in tandem with guideline development and that the HUD-MF guidelines substantially conform to National Council of Affordable Housing Market Analysts (NCAHMA) standards, the Team will work to align USDA-RD and create an interagency Federal standard which could be available to State and local housing agencies for adoption in the future; and
- B. Provide technical assistance as needed to support emerging 3rd party market study standardization efforts, such as those currently underway by NCAHMA.
As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions at 202-939-1753 or tamdur@housingonline.com.
–Thom Amdur
Executive Director
