Federal / Agency News

The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee voted unanimously to favorably report the nomination of Damon Smith to serve as HUD general counsel. Smith currently serves as acting general counsel and was principal general deputy counsel for HUD during the Obama administration.

HUD’s Office of Housing updated its COVID-19 Q&As on August 9 to reflect the CDC’s new eviction moratorium order announced August 3 temporarily halting evictions in counties with heightened levels of transmission.

Last week, HUD published the Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 Fair Market Rents (FMRs). The new rents will become effective on October 1, 2021 for the Housing Choice Voucher program and Moderate Rehabilitation Single Room Occupancy program, unless HUD receives a valid request for reevaluation of specific area Fair Market Rents (FMRs).

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a new federal eviction moratorium through Oct. 3 in communities experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases. As of August 1, over 80 percent of counties were experiencing substantial or high COVID cases and would be covered under the new eviction moratorium.

Coming in at over 2,700 pages, the group of 22 bipartisan senate negotiators released their $1 trillion infrastructure legislative text. While the bill does not include any items from the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act, it does contain several housing-related provisions

HUD updated its Multifamily Q&A for COVID-19 on July 29. The updated questions and answers pertain to which payments are to be included in tenant income calculations for HUD-assisted Multifamily housing and the Child Tax Credit.

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs will hold a nomination hearing to consider Julia Gordon to be Federal Housing Administration commissioner and assistant secretary for Housing at HUD at 10 a.m. ET on August 5. NH&RA sent a letter to the committee supporting Gordon’s nomination.

Last week the House passed fiscal year (FY) 2022 funding for nine of the 12 appropriations bills.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) published Notice 2021-45 advising Housing Credit allocating agencies that qualified for disaster credits authority under the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2020 of the population residing in qualified disaster zones.

HUD published Housing Notice 2021-03 Forbearance Relief and Associated Tenant Protections for FHA-Insured, Section 202, HUD-held, and Risk Share Multifamily Loans, which details tenant protections during Multifamily forbearance.

The federal eviction moratorium will expire on Saturday, July 31. On-going state and local eviction moratoriums may still apply to your residents/properties. Last week, the White House held an eviction prevention progress report webinar. The full recording is available here and a summary is available here. The Department of the Treasury released slides on the Emergency Rental Assistance Program, as well as slides detailing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau resources made available through their Housing Insecurity campaign. 

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) announced it will propose rescinding the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) rule issued in May 2020. This decision follows the completion of a review initiated by Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu shortly after he took office.