Public Housing

On Tuesday, February 7, the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity approved the Affordable Housing and Self-Sufficiency Improvement Act (AHISSA) (currently unnumbered) by a voice vote. AHISSA is the most recent iteration of the Section Eight Savings Act (SESA) and the Section Eight Voucher Reform Act (SEVRA).

HUD recently issued a NOFA for nearly $110 million in FY 2012 Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) Implementation Grants. HUD executives will host a call to discuss the 2012 funding round on Monday, February 6 at 2:15 pm EST.

For the last month, Congress has considered an appropriations minibus, H.R. 2112, to incorporate Fiscal Year 2012 spending bills for the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Justice, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, and related programs. On November 14, a House-Senate conference committee approved a compromise minibus measure in the form of a conference report.

The Center for Housing Policy has released a new brief titled “More than a Roof: Case Studies of Public Housing Agency Initiatives to Increase Residents’ Economic Security. The paper highlights PHA efforts to help residents make progress toward economic security.

More than six years after HUD assumed control in 2005, Assistant Secretary Sandra Henriquez announced that the Detroit Housing Commission (DHC) would be returned to local control.

HUD is offering Choice Neighborhood Implementation Grants to Public Housing Authorities (PHAs), local governments, nonprofits, tribal entities, and for-profit developers that apply jointly with a public entity.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced this week that HUD is joining forces with GreatSchools, a national non-profit educational resource for parents, to give parents living in public housing or who receive HUD Housing Choice Voucher rental assistance greater access to local school information that will help them make more informed decisions about where to send their children to school.

HUD has announced policy changes that will be implemented for the Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) program in order to achieve certain savings and slow the growth of PBRA expenditures.

NH&RA is pleased to present the PowerPoint presentations from the recent 2011 Fall Developers Forum (November 14-15) in Boston, Mass.

The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Insurance, Housing and Community Opportunity met November 2, 2011 to discuss the Obama Administration’s proposed demonstration program, Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD). The RAD proposal evolved out of the Obama Administration’s Transformation of Rental Assistance proposal and would help preserve public housing and projects subsidized by the HUD “orphan” programs (RAP, Rent Supp and Section 8 Moderate Rehab) by allowing Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) and owners to apply to convert to long term project-based rental assistance (either project-based section 8 vouchers or MAHRA type-project-based rental assistance).

The Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) recently announced the formation of a subsidiary, the Corporation for Affordable Housing (CAH), which was created in order to provide additional development of public housing in the state of Alaska.

The US Senate Transportation-HUD Appropriations The US Senate Transportation-HUD Appropriations Subcommittee marked up and reported its FY 2012 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill on September 21. A summary released by the Committee reports the following funding decisions…