Housing Report: June 6, 2005
Capitol Hill Update
House Financial Services Committee Passes GSE Legislation
Confirmation Hearing Held on New HUD Commissioner
AAHSA Takes “Congress to Home”
AAHSA’s 2005 CCRC Profile Available
Section 202 Deadline Extension
Proposed 2006 FMRs Released
AASC Announces “Navigating Medicare” Module to Certificate Program
Housing Report
Policy
The Hill has been busy in recent weeks with a slew of housing legislation working its way through committee hearings and mark-up. The House is getting closer to finishing its work on the HUD appropriations bill. Mark up by the Transportation, Treasury, HUD subcommittee is scheduled for June 15th, with the full committee mark-up on the 22nd. The final bill will go to the floor on June 30th although the schedule may slip.. There is no indication how the subcommittee plans to deal with the fact that there is not enough money in the allocation to cover the costs of all the programs.
To date the Senate appropriations subcommittee has not received its allocation, but once it does a mark-up will be scheduled. AAHSA is continuing to meet with congressional offices to urge full funding of the HUD budget and stress the value and importance of the Section 202 program. If you have not already contacted your members of Congress, please visit AAHSA’s Contact Congress site today at
www.aahsa.org.
The Section 8 legislation, HR 1999, introduced by Gary Miller (CA-42nd) has been the subject of two hearings, with the proposal to “reform” the program being met with rejection by the housing community, including associations representing the various public housing authorities. While there may be a House Section 8 bill, it is unlikely that the Administration will get everything on its wish list. So far HR 1999 only has 6 co-sponsors and subcommittee Chairman Ney (OH-18th) is not among them. The Senate has yet to schedule a hearing on the Senate companion bill, S. 771, introduced by Senator Allard (R-CO).
The Government Reform Subcommittee on Federalism and the Census held a hearing on May 24th on “Bringing Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG) Spending into the 21st Century: Introducing Accountability and Meaningful Performance Measures into the Decades-Old CDBG Program.” The President’s primary reason for proposing the elimination of the CDBG program in the FY2006 budget was the fact that it scored poorly on OMB's analysis, the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART). The purpose of the hearing was to look at how CDBG funds project performance is measured and how to make the program grantees more accountable. Panelists, including, Roy A. Bernardi, Deputy Secretary of HUD and former Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, discussed the need for flexibility, the community consolidated planning process and the inability of HUD to analyze plans and data.
For more information, please contact
Alayna Waldrum.
On Wednesday, May 25, by a vote of 65-5 the House Financial Services Committee adopted GSE (that’s Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Home Loan Banks) reform legislation to provide a new and stronger regulator for the GSEs and to create new affordable housing programs, modeled after the Federal Home Loan Banks’ Affordable Housing Program. The bill directs Fannie and Freddie to fund their new programs with five percent of each of the corporation’s after tax profits. The housing built or rehabilitated is required to benefit extremely low income and very low income families. It is estimated that the dollar amount for these two funds would be $400-600 million in the first few years (as each GSE is emerging from accounting problems) and could reach $1 billion in five to six years. The housing produced, preserved, or rehabilitated under each enterprise’s affordable housing fund will count toward meeting their affordable housing goals only if the GSEs purchase the mortgages with other GSE funds.
The legislation also stipulates that the GSEs have a duty to serve certain underserved markets, including affordable housing preservation. The bill requires the GSEs to lead the industry in developing loan products and underwriting guidelines for preserving subsidized housing including the section 202 properties.
To read the Committee’s bill, go to
financialservices.house.gov/ media/pdf/109fchr1461am1.pdf
and scroll down to Subtitle B of Title I, Improvement of Mission. For more information,
contact
Nancy Libson.
On May 25th the Senate Banking Committee held its confirmation hearing for Brian D. Montgomery. Montgomery has been nominated for Assistant Secretary for Housing/FHA Commissioner, the position vacated by Dr. John Weicher. In his testimony, Montgomery cited the anticipated growth of the senior population and the importance of addressing their housing needs. Previously Mr. Montgomery worked for the White House, the Bush-Cheney campaign and during Bush’s time as Governor of TX, as Communications Director at the Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs.
AAHSA News
In our efforts to educate Congress about federally funded senior housing, AAHSA’s housing team took congressional staff on a tour of local affordable elderly housing communities. Senate staff from Appropriations, Aging and Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs committees took a tour of Samuel Simmons NCBA Estates, an older Section 202 built before cost containment, and Plymouth at North Capitol a recently opened 202 PRAC. The tours were a great success and gave staff a first hand look at the issues affecting housing providers, such as rehabilitation, adequate development costs, timely subsidies and increasing need. AAHSA is planning more site visits for staff and members throughout the next year, but remember – nothing will have as great an impact as you inviting your members of Congress into your facilities to talk about how federal programs and their funding impacts you and the rest of their constituents. For more information, contact
Alayna Waldrum.
The most comprehensive, up-to-date study of CCRC communities, financing and residents is now available through the AAHSA bookstore. New chapters include information on actuarial and competitive data. Visit the Publications section at
www.aahsa.org
New and Notable
The Friday before the 202 applications were due, HUD released a number of technical corrections and a deadline extension for its Section 202 NOFA. The new deadline for the Section 202 program is July 1, 2005.
The 202 program changes include a number of date modifications related to attachments and supporting documents conforming to the new deadline, environmental assessments, single vs. multiple applicant submission procedures, clarifications on co-sponsorship and more. Field office contacts have changed for application submissions, including elimination of the Washington, D.C. office. D.C. applications must be submitted to the Baltimore office. The 811 program also had a technical correction including environmental site assessments.
Assisted Living Conversion Program (ALCP) and Section 811 application deadlines remain the same. For the ALCP the manner for submitting original project plans is clarified. The full text of the notice is at
www.hud.gov /offices/adm/grants/nofa05/sec202shep.pdf.
The proposed 2006 Fair Market Rents (FMRs) were released in the June 2, 2005 Federal Register. The FY2006 FMRs may be significantly different from previous years because they were calculated using the revised OMB area definitions issued in 2003. The changes in area definitions have resulted in different proposed FMRs particularly in counties that were in old metropolitan areas that are now considered non-metropolitan under OMB’s new definitions. For FY2006, HUD is using county-based statistical areas defined by OMB, with some modifications and rents projected to April 2006.
FMRs are used in a number of programs including Housing Choice Vouchers, some expiring project-based Section 8 contracts and initial rents for SRO housing assistance payment (HAP) contracts. Comments are due by August 1, 2005 and the final FMRs will become effective October 1, 2005. See
www.hudclips.org/sub_nonhud/cgi/pdf/10882.pdf.
The American Association of Service Coordinators (AASC) has added a new training module to its online training and certification program on Medicare. Participants will learnt the basics of the Medicare program, its various components, how it relates to service coordination and how to get current, accurate information. The module has been approved for 2.0 CEUs.
AASC also recently added a life management module on how to accommodate the ever-changing environment at home and work for 1.5 CEUs. For more information, visit
www.servicecoordinator.org.
Last Updated : 1/19/2006 11:38:26 AM
