The Housing Assistance Council is an independent, non-partisan and regularly responds to Congressional committees, Member offices, federal agencies, and policy advocacy coalitions with the research and information needed to make informed policy decisions. Our research work, Rural Data Portal, and Veterans Data Central all provide valuable, educational context to frame the rural policy conversation. If you want to know how a new program or policy could impact America’s small towns and rural places, please don’t hesitate to contact us at policy@ruralhome.org.

HAC’s comments to the FHFA aim to improve Duty to Serve program

The Housing Assistance Council (HAC) offered comments on Duty to Serve as the Enterprises (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) react to the housing and economic challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic and work to plan for the future of Duty to Serve. Our country is facing an unprecedented health and economic challenge, and Duty to Serve remains critically important to help rural areas weather the storm.

HAC’s comments covered all three Duty to Serve markets (rural housing, manufactured housing, and affordable housing preservation) and called for:

  • More transparent data availability so that stakeholders can better understand Duty to Serve progress and areas for improvement.
  • Continued investment in building partnerships with existing housing providers including local, regional and national nonprofits; tribes; and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) who already work in high-need communities,
  • More ambitious loan purchase goals in all three Duty to Serve markets.

HAC firmly sees Duty to Serve as a social justice issue. In an era in which racial and economic inequities are top-of-the-fold news stories, we can use Duty to Serve to go past minimum promised levels of loan purchase and try to fundamentally shift the lives of Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and persistently poor families.

Click here to read HAC’s full comment letter. 

HAC asks HUD to protect transgender people

The Housing Assistance Council (HAC) submitted comments on September 22, 2020 opposing the proposed regulation titled “Making Admission or Placement Determinations Based on Sex,” issued recently by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). HUD’s proposal would allow homeless shelters and some other facilities with HUD funding to discriminate against transgender or gender-nonconforming people by treating them according to the gender they were assigned at birth rather than the gender with which they identify. As HAC’s comments explain, this policy would allow a shelter – or every shelter – to refuse to admit people who do not fit stereotypes of male or female. Legitimizing discrimination is not acceptable at any time, and it is particularly cruel now when the U.S. housing and homelessness crisis has been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. HAC urges HUD to reject the proposed rule.

HAC Condemns Weak Fair Housing Rule

The Housing Assistance Council (HAC) strongly opposes the dismantling of the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule. A new Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulation, announced in July and published in the Federal Register on August 7, willfully overlooks the history of racist housing policies that has created deep and persistent segregation in our country – in rural places, cities and suburbs – and ignores our moral obligation to correct segregation and its harmful effects.

The 2015 AFFH rule required that communities receiving federal subsidies must analyze racial segregation in housing and submit plans to reverse such trends. Even before this latest move to entirely dismantle AFFH, HUD’s current leadership weakened that regulation. The newest version, however, is essentially a full rollback of AFFH, asking local governments merely to “take any action that is rationally related to promoting one or more attributes of fair housing.”

This change contravenes the Fair Housing Act of 1968 – and it is especially egregious at this point in history, when Americans are finally recognizing the damage caused by our society’s racial inequities. Every family deserves a safe, affordable home in an inclusive community. HAC calls on HUD and all Americans to work together to end the cycle of racially segregated and under-resourced communities, and to protect and advance the intent of the Fair Housing Act.


HAC has previously submitted comments supporting the creation of the 2015 AFFH rule and, later, opposing its rollback:

Thank you for supporting rural housing programs

HAC would like to thank the more than 100 organizations who signed on in support of rural housing’s inclusion in the next COVID-19 relief package! We value and appreciate your partnership. To view the final letter, click here.

Rural communities have been deeply impacted by coronavirus outbreaks and related economic challenges. Having access to a safe, healthy and affordable home is foundational to weathering the storm of this pandemic, and added funding for USDA’s Rural Housing Service programs will be important to ensuring that rural residents aren’t left behind. Congress is currently working to negotiate the next COVID-19 relief package, and we are hopeful that Congressional leaders will prioritize the need for rural housing funding in that effort.

HAC urges support of rural housing programs in Covid-19 relief efforts

HAC would like to thank all of the organizations that expressed their support of rural housing programs!

101

Organizations


Congress is currently working to negotiate a fourth COVID-19 relief package. Rural housing programs have yet to receive any supplemental funding to address this growing crisis in small towns and rural communities. HAC is circulating a sign-on letter to Congressional leadership in support of including rural housing funding in the next relief package. You can view the text of the letter here. As a valued friend of HAC, we hope that you will add your organization’s name to this effort.

If you have any questions, please reach out to HAC’s Government Relations Manager, Samantha Booth, at samantha@ruralhome.orgThe deadline to sign on is Wednesday, July 22nd. We appreciate your help.

 

FY21 USDA Appropriations Process Moves to House Floor

UPDATED July 14, 2020 – The House of Representatives is expected to consider the Agriculture funding measure, H.R. 7610, during the week of July 20. It will be part of a “minibus” package of four appropriations bills, along with the State, Interior and Veterans Affairs Departments. The House Appropriations Committee approved the Ag bill on July 9.

July 7, 2020 – On July 6, 2020 the House Subcommittee on USDA Appropriations approved a funding bill for fiscal year 2021, which begins October 1, 2020. The bill keeps most rural housing programs at their FY20 funding levels, with increases for Section 521 Rental Assistance and Section 542 vouchers requested in the Administration’s budget. There is no funding for the rental preservation technical assistance program.

The full House Appropriations Committee will mark up the bill on July 9 and then it can proceed to a vote in the House itself. The Senate has not yet begun work on FY21 appropriations and will not meet again until July 20.

The bill would make two changes in language related to rental housing preservation. First, vouchers would be available for tenants in properties whose mortgages are “prepaid or otherwise paid off” after September 30, 2005. Past appropriations have limited vouchers to properties “prepaid” after that date and have excluded tenants in properties where mortgages have matured or been foreclosed upon.

Second, the bill adopts a shift proposed in the Administration’s budget. In past years, appropriations bills have put the MPR rental preservation program and vouchers in a single pool of money. In practice, this has meant MPR funds have been used to fill shortfalls in voucher funding. This House bill moves the voucher program into the Rental Assistance account, separating it from MPR.

The bill includes last year’s language allowing property owners to request 20-year terms for Rental Assistance contracts. It also continues incentives for nonprofits to purchase and preserve properties, including a return on investment and an asset management fee of up to $7,500 per property.

USDA Rural Development Appropriations

USDA Rural Dev. Prog.
(dollars in millions)
FY19 Final Approp. FY20 Admin. Budget  FY20 Final Approp. FY21 Admin. Budget FY21 House Bill
502 Single Fam. Direct
Self-Help setaside*
$1,000

5*

0

0

 $1,000

5*

0

0

 $1,000

5*

502 Single Family Guar.  24,000  24,000  24,000 24,000 24,000
504 VLI Repair Loans  28  0 28  0 28
504 VLI Repair Grants  30  0 30  30 30
515 Rental Hsg. Direct Lns.  40  0 40 0 40
514 Farm Labor Hsg. Lns.  27.5  0 28 0 30
516 Farm Labor Hsg. Grts.  10  0 10 0 10
521 Rental Assistance 1,331.4 1,335**  1,375  1,410**  1,410**
523 Self-Help TA  30  0 31  0 31
533 Hsg. Prsrv. Grants  15 0 15  15 15
538 Rental Hsg. Guar. 230 250 230  230  230
Rental Prsrv. Demo. (MPR)  24.5  0 28  40  30
542 Rural Hsg. Vouchers  27 32** 32  40**  40**
Rural Cmnty. Dev’t Init. 6 0 6 0 6
Rental Prsrv. TA 1 0 1 0 0

* For the self-help setaside in Section 502 direct, the figures in the table represent budget authority, not program levels.
** The budget and the FY21 House bill would separate vouchers from MPR and move them into the Rental Assistance account.

HAC’s Response to CRA Modernization Plan

The Housing Assistance Council submitted comments to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) on their proposal to modernize the Community Reinvestment Act.

For numerous reasons, The Housing Assistance Council does not support the OCC and FDIC’s proposal. HAC appreciates efforts and ideas in the plan to improve CRA’s reach and effectiveness in rural communities. These proposed improvements, however, are far outweighed by a considerable number of ill-conceived and unsubstantiated aspects of the plan that run counter to the intent, value, and effectiveness of CRA. Furthermore, the Housing Assistance Council is disappointed that the OCC and FDIC did not include the Federal Reserve as part of this proposal. Uniform implementation and oversight is critical for an effort as far reaching and important as CRA. Additionally, with the health and economic catastrophe created by the COVID-19 pandemic, there should be an indefinite suspension of the CRA comment period. The comment period deadline, which was initially proposed for only 60 days, should have been at least 120 days even under the best of circumstances.

The Housing Assistance Council unequivocally supports the Community Reinvestment Act and what it stands for. In any effort to modernize or modify CRA, it is imperative to fully consider the impact of those modifications and to ensure that CRA continues to build upon its unparalleled legacy of expanding access to financial products and services. HAC believes CRA can be modernized and improved, but it is important to acknowledge that CRA has been responsible for more than $1.5 trillion in capital investments to underserved communities. Without CRA, many communities would lack access to capital, revitalization efforts would have not occurred, and disinvestment would be more common. CRA should build upon its established platform for improving communities’ access to credit, not jeopardize the ethos, intent, and effectiveness of this vital institution.

HAC Opposes Fair Housing Rule Change

HAC has taken a firm stance against the Administration’s proposed change to the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulations. In comments submitted on March 16, 2020, HAC wrote, in part:

The definition [of affirmatively furthering fair housing] now proposed – “acting in a manner consistent with reducing obstacles within the participant’s sphere of influence to providing fair housing choice”  – asks very little. It omits any vision of a truly fair community, contemplating only the actions that can be taken by a single entity without any far-reaching goals. Taken with the rest of the proposal’s weakened provisions, this definition inappropriately downgrades the importance of AFFH activities. . .  .
HUD proposes to measure whether a jurisdiction is affirmatively furthering fair housing by examining its lack of adjudicated fair housing violations, the availability of affordable housing and the availability of affordable housing in decent condition. Yet none of these is a determinant of fair housing choice.

HAC’s full comments are here and the complete comment docket is here.

Administration Budget Recognizes Rural Preservation Needs but Proposes Many Housing Cuts

Feb. 10, 2020 – Housing aid and other safety net programs are again targeted for reduction in the Trump Administration’s budget for fiscal year 2021, which begins October 1, 2020. The budget request, released today, is the first step in the annual appropriations process.

For the third year in a row, the Administration proposes to eliminate most USDA rural housing programs and many HUD programs – though there are not quite as many zeroes this year as in the past. Also for the third year in a row, Congress is expected to develop its own funding proposals. As the tables below indicate, Congress has not been inclined to accept cuts to housing aid.

To follow the funding process as it develops, sign up for the biweekly HAC News newsletter.

USDA

The FY21 budget departs from this Administration’s previous proposals in recognizing a need for repair and preservation of existing properties, both rental and owner-occupied. It proposes to fund the Multifamily Rental Preservation demonstration (MPR) at $40 million, considerably higher than the $28 million appropriated for FY20, and much needed because late in 2019 USDA had a backlog of MPR commitments amounting to around $70 million. It also suggests level funding of $30 million for Section 504 repair grants for very low-income elderly homeowners (but nothing for Section 504 loans) and $10 million for Section 533 Housing Preservation Grants, which can be used for either rental or owner-occupied homes. The budget narrative does not explain this apparent shift in approach.

Like this Administration’s past budgets, this one would charge tenants in Section 515 or Section 514/516 rentals a minimum of $50 per month. The budget also proposes to delete language that was adopted in the final FY20 funding agreement and allows renewals of Section 521 Rental Assistance contracts for 20 years, subject to annual appropriations.

USDA Rural Development Appropriations[tdborder][/tdborder]

 

USDA Rural Dev. Prog.
(dollars in millions)
FY19 Admin. Budget FY19 Final Approp. FY20 Admin. Budget FY20 Final Approp. FY21 Admin. Budget
502 Single Fam. Direct
Self-Help setaside*
0
0
$1,000
5*
0
0
$1,000
5*
0
0
502 Single Family Guar. 24,000 24,000 24,000 24,000 24,000
504 VLI Repair Loans 0 28 0 28 0
504 VLI Repair Grants 0 30 0 30 30
515 Rental Hsg. Direct Lns. 0 40 0 40 0
514 Farm Labor Hsg. Lns. 0 27.5 0 28 0
516 Farm Labor Hsg. Grts. 0 10 0 10 0
521 Rental Assistance 1,331.4 1,331.4 1,335** 1,375 1,410**
523 Self-Help TA 0 30 0 31 0
533 Hsg. Prsrv. Grants 0 15 0 15 15
538 Rental Hsg. Guar. 250 230 250 230 230
Rental Prsrv. Demo. (MPR) 0 24.5 0 28 40
542 Rural Hsg. Vouchers 20 27 32** 32 40**
Rural Cmnty. Dev’t Init. 0 6 0 6 0
Rental Prsrv. TA 0 1 0 1 0

* For the self-help setaside in Section 502 direct, the figures in the table represent budget authority, not program levels.
** The budget would move vouchers into the Rental Assistance account.

HUD

As it has before, the Administration proposes to cut support for public housing, CDBG, HOME, Native American housing and SHOP, as well as the relatively new veterans home modification and rehabilitation program. It does propose increases above FY20 levels for project-based Section 8, Section 202 housing for the elderly, Section 811 housing for people with disabilities, and the healthy homes/lead hazard control account.

The Administration also includes a proposal to eliminate funding for the National Housing Trust Fund, although that funding comes from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and does not need to be included in this budget.

HUD Appropriations

HUD Program
(dollars in millions)

FY19 Admin. Budget

FY19 Final Approp.

FY20 Admin. Budget

FY20 Final Approp.

FY21 Admin. Budget

CDBG

0

$3,300 0 $3,425 0
HOME

0

1,250 0 1,350 0
Self-Help Homeownshp. (SHOP)

0

10 0 10 0
Veterans Home Rehab

0

4 0 4 0
Tenant-Based Rental Asstnce.
VASH setaside
Tribal VASH

20,550
0
4

22,598
40
4
22,244
0
0
23,874
40
1
18,833
0
4
Project-Based Rental Asstnce.

10,952

11,747 12,021 12,570 12,642
Public Hsg. Capital Fund

0

2,775 0 2,869 0
Public Hsg. Operating Fund

3,279

4,653 2,863 4,549 3,572
Choice Neighbrhd. Initiative

0

150 0 175 0
Native Amer. Hsg. Block Grt.

600

655 600 646 600
Homeless Assistance Grants

2,383

2,636 2,599 2,777 2,773
Hsg. Opps. for Persons w/ AIDS

330

393 330 410 330
202 Hsg. for Elderly

563

678 644 793 853
811 Hsg. for Disabled

132

184 157 202 252
Fair Housing

62.3

65.3 62 70 65.3
Healthy Homes & Lead Haz. Cntl.

145

279 290 290 360
Housing Counseling

45

50 45 53 45
US Capital building

Congress Set to Pass FY20 Funding Bills Before Dec. 20 Deadline

On December 16, 2019 congressional negotiators released the text of two massive spending bills that are expected to fund the entire federal government for the rest of fiscal year 2020, which started on October 1, 2019 and ends on September 30, 2020.

The House is expected to pass both “minibus” bills on Tuesday, December 17. Then the Senate will pass them and President Trump will sign them by Friday, when the continuing resolution currently keeping the government open ends.

Most of USDA’s rural housing programs will receive the same amount of funding as in FY19. Section 514 farm labor housing loans and Section 523 self-help housing grants receive small increases. The most significant increases are for the MPR rental preservation program and for Section 542 vouchers, which are for tenants in properties where USDA-financed mortgages are prepaid.

The bill includes several other provisions favorable for preservation of USDA-financed rental housing:

  • incentives to nonprofits and PHAs that purchase rental properties to preserve them;
  • optional 20-year terms for Section 521 Rental Assistance agreements; and
  • $1 million for technical assistance to facilitate acquisition of multifamily properties to preserve them.

The bill directs that, “to the maximum extent feasible” at least 10 percent of each program’s funding should go to persistent poverty counties. These are counties that have had 20 percent or more of the population under the poverty line for the past 30 years (beginning with the 1990 census).

USDA Rural Development Appropriations[tdborder][/tdborder]

 

USDA Rural Dev. Prog.
(dollars in millions)
FY18 Approp. FY19 Final Approp. FY20 Admin. Budget FY20 House Bill
(H.R. 3055)
FY20 Senate Bill (S. 2522) FY20 Final (H.R. 1865)
502 Single Fam. Direct
Self-Help setaside*
$1,100
5*
$1,000
5*
0
0
$1,000
0
$1,000
5*
$1,000
5*
502 Single Family Guar. 24,000 24,000 24,000 24,000 24,000 24,000
504 VLI Repair Loans 28 28 0 28 28 28
504 VLI Repair Grants 30 30 0 30 30 30
515 Rental Hsg. Direct Lns. 40 40 0 45 40 40
514 Farm Labor Hsg. Lns. 23 27.5 0 30 27.5 **
516 Farm Labor Hsg. Grts. 8.4 10 0 10 10 10
521 Rental Assistance 1,345 1,331.4 1,375 1,375 1,375 1,375
523 Self-Help TA 30 30 0 32 30 31
533 Hsg. Prsrv. Grants 10 15 0 15 15 15
538 Rental Hsg. Guar. 230 230 250 250 230 230
Rental Prsrv. Demo. (MPR) 22 24.5 0 40 24.5 28
542 Rural Hsg. Vouchers 25 27 35 35 32 32
Rural Cmnty. Dev’t Init. 4 6 0 8 6 6
Rental Prsrv. TA 1 1 0 0 1 1

* For the self-help setaside in Section 502 direct, the figures in the table represent budget authority, not program levels.
** The bill provides $8.7 million in budget authority for Section 514 loans, which generates a program level somewhere between the House’s $30 million and the Senate’s 27.5 million.