HOME Investment Partnerships Program: Program Updates and Streamlining

DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT <CFR>24 CFR Parts 91, 92, 570, and 982</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FR-6144-P-01]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2506-AC50</RIN> <SUBJECT>HOME Investment Partnerships Program: Program Updates and Streamlining</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of the Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, Department of Housing and Urban Development, HUD. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> HUD's HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME program or HOME) provides formula grants to States and units of general local government to fund a wide range of activities to produce and maintain affordable rental and homeownership housing and provides tenant-based rental assistance for low-income and very low-income households. This proposed rule would revise the current HOME regulations to update, simplify, or streamline requirements, better align the program with other Federal housing programs, and implement recent amendments to the HOME statute. This rule also includes minor revisions to the regulations for the Community Development Block Grant and Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Programs consistent with the implementation of proposed changes to the HOME program. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Comment Due Date:</E> July 29, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> There are two methods for submitting public comments. All submissions must refer to the above docket number and title. 1. <E T="03">Electronic Submission of Comments.</E> Comments may be submitted electronically through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> HUD strongly encourages commenters to submit comments electronically. Electronic submission of comments allows the commenter maximum time to prepare and submit a comment, ensures timely receipt by HUD, and enables HUD to make comments immediately available to the public. Comments submitted electronically through <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> can be viewed by other commenters and interested members of the public. Commenters should follow the instructions provided on that website to submit comments electronically. 2. <E T="03">Submission of Comments by Mail.</E> Comments may be submitted by mail to the Regulations Division, Office of General Counsel, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 451 7th Street SW, Room 10276, Washington, DC 20410-0500. <NOTE> <HD SOURCE="HED">Note:</HD> To receive consideration as a public comment, comments must be submitted through one of the two methods specified above. </NOTE> <E T="03">Public Inspection of Public Comments.</E> HUD will make all properly submitted comments and communications available for public inspection and copying during regular business hours at the above address. Due to security measures at the HUD Headquarters building, you must schedule an appointment in advance to review the public comments by calling the Regulations Division at 202-708-3055 (this is not a toll-free number). HUD welcomes and is prepared to receive calls from individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as individuals with speech or communication disabilities. To learn more about how to make an accessible telephone call, please visit <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/telecommunications-relay-service-trs.</E> Copies of all comments submitted are available for inspection and downloading at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> In accordance with 5 U.S.C. 553(b)(4), a summary of this proposed rule may be found at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov.</E> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Virginia Sardone, Director, Office of Affordable Housing Programs, Office of Community Planning and Development, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 451 7th Street SW, Room 7160, Washington, DC 20410; telephone number (202) 708-2684 (this is not a toll-free number). HUD welcomes and is prepared to receive calls from individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as individuals with speech or communication disabilities. To learn more about how to make an accessible telephone call, please visit <E T="03">https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/telecommunications-relay-service-trs.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background—The HOME Program</HD> The HOME program is authorized by title II of the Cranston-Gonzalez National Affordable Housing Act  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> (“NAHA”) and has been in operation since 1992. The HOME program provides grants to States, local jurisdictions, and consortia of local jurisdictions (collectively, participating jurisdictions or PJs) and is used, often in partnership with local nonprofit groups, to fund a wide range of activities to build, buy, or rehabilitate affordable housing for rent or homeownership or to fund direct rental assistance to low-income people. <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> HOME program funds are awarded annually as formula grants to participating jurisdictions. After the Department obligates funds to a participating jurisdiction, the Department establishes a HOME Investment Trust Fund  <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> for each participating jurisdiction, providing a line of credit that a participating jurisdiction may draw upon as needed. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  42 U.S.C. 12721 <E T="03">et seq.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">See</E> HUD's HOME Investment Partnerships Program web page at <E T="03">https://www.hud.gov/program_offices/comm_planning/home.</E> </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  HUD's regulations for the HOME Investment Trust Fund can be found at 24 CFR 92.500. </FTNT> The HOME program is the largest Federal block grant to States and local governments designed exclusively to create affordable housing for low-income households. Each year, the program allocates approximately $1.5 billion among States and approximately 600 localities nationwide. In fiscal year 2023, participating jurisdictions completed 6,848 rental housing units and 4,051 homebuyer units, assisted 2,717 low-income homeowners to repair their homes, and provided tenant-based rental assistance to 13,016 low-income households. HOME funds are most often used as gap financing for rental projects, particularly for projects that have been awarded Low-Income Housing Credits (26 U.S.C. 42) (“LIHTC”). Currently, there are 245,122 HOME-assisted rental units operating in their periods of affordability ( <E T="03">i.e.,</E> subject to ongoing HOME income and rent requirements). The HOME program is designed to reinforce several important values and principles of community development. First, the HOME program's flexibility empowers people and communities to design and implement strategies tailored to their own needs and priorities. Second, the HOME program's emphasis on consolidated planning expands and strengthens partnerships among all levels of government and the relationship with the private sector in the development of affordable housing. Third, the HOME program's technical assistance activities and set-aside for qualified community housing development organizations help to build the capacity of and partnerships with these community-based nonprofit organizations. Fourth, the HOME program's requirement that participating jurisdictions match 25 cents of every dollar in program funds helps to mobilize community resources in support of affordable housing. While participating jurisdictions may undertake housing development activities directly, they also may provide HOME funds to for profit developers, public agencies, or private non-profit organizations to develop affordable housing for rent or sale to income-eligible households. Participating jurisdictions may provide HOME funds for affordable housing as grants, direct loans, loan guarantees, or other forms of credit enhancement, or for rental assistance or security deposits. Non-development activities such as tenant-based rental assistance or downpayment assistance for homeownership are generally administered by the participating jurisdiction, another public agency, or a non-profit organization as subrecipients acting on behalf of the participating jurisdiction. The participating jurisdiction ensures compliance with HOME affordability requirements during the required period of affordability through the execution and recording of regulatory agreements on HOME-assisted housing and other enforceable measures such as deed restrictions or similar instruments. All HOME-assisted units must be occupied by income-eligible households. HOME-assisted rental units must have their rents approved by the participating jurisdiction and require owners to restrict the rent paid by tenants to amounts at or below the HUD-published maximum HOME rent limits. Owners of HOME-assisted rental housing must follow their adopted written tenant selection policies and criteria and select tenants from a written waiting list in chronological order of their application, insofar as practicable. Owners of HOME-assisted rental housing must also affirmatively market the availability of units in a manner likely to reach eligible tenants. Generally, participating jurisdictions maintain information on HOME-assisted rental housing ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> websites, brochures, fliers) that prospective tenants may access to identify housing opportunities. HOME-assisted housing for homebuyers is also subject to a period of affordability. If the HOME-assisted homeownership housing is sold during the period of affordability, either the property must be sold at an affordable price to another low-income homebuyer or all or a portion of any purchase assistance provided to the seller must be recaptured from the net proceeds of the sale. The HOME program regulations are codified in 24 CFR par ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 453k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━