The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is proposing new regulatory requirements under its HOME Investment Partnerships Program. HOME is the largest federal block grant to state and local governments designed exclusively to produce more affordable housing for low-income families.

HUD’s proposal would:

• Require state and local governments to adopt policies and procedures to improve their oversight of projects, develop a system for assessing the relative risk of projects, and more closely monitor their HOME-funded sub-recipients;
• Require state and local governments to assess a developer’s capacity and the long-term viability of the project, before they commit HOME funds to a project;
• Require more frequent reporting by state and local ‘participating jurisdictions’ to enable HUD to more closely track projects once they’re under way; and
• Set a higher ‘performance bar’ by establishing specific timeframes for taking appropriate corrective actions against participating jurisdictions who fail to complete what they started.

Recently, the HOME program has been under fire in Congress, with hearings in the House Committee on Financial Services called in response to a Washington Post series criticizing HUD’s oversight of the HOME program. Many of the changes in the HUD’s new rule proposal are based partially on problems identified during the hearings, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC).

To Learn More:
Read HUD’s Press Release