Adoption of 2020 Core Based Statistical Area Standards

DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT <CFR>24 CFR Part 5</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FR-6464-P-01]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2501-AE11</RIN> <SUBJECT>Adoption of 2020 Core Based Statistical Area Standards</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Office of the Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This proposed rule would adopt the 2020 Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) standards as determined by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The Metropolitan Areas Protection and Standardization Act of 2021 (MAPS Act) requires agencies that propagate OMB's CBSA Standards for non-statistical use to seek public comment before determining that the propagation supports the purposes of the agency's programs and is in the public interest. This proposed rule describes HUD's use of CBSAs, how CBSA standards support relevant programs, and how HUD believes the adoption of updated standards ensures accuracy of data and program administration. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Comments are due by:</E> November 5, 2024. </EFFDATE> <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 public comments, comments must be submitted through one of the two methods specified above. Again, all submissions must refer to the docket number and title of the rule. </NOTE> <E T="03">No Facsimile Comments.</E> Facsimile (FAX) comments are not acceptable. <E T="03">Public Inspection of Public Comments.</E> All comments and communications properly submitted to HUD will be available for public inspection and copying between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. weekdays at the above address. Due to security measures at the HUD Headquarters building, an advance appointment to review the public comments must be scheduled 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 from 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> 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> Kurt Usowski, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic Affairs, Office of Policy Development and Research, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 451 7th St. SW, Washington, DC 20410, telephone number 202-402-5899 (this is not a toll-free number) or via email to <E T="03">Kurt.G.Usowski@hud.gov.</E> 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: Core Based Statistical Areas</HD> In its role as coordinator of the Federal statistical system, OMB establishes and maintains the CBSA program. CBSAs are geographic areas containing a large population nucleus, or urban area, and adjacent communities that have a high degree of integration with that nucleus measured by commuting ties. There are two types of CBSAs, the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) and the Micropolitan Statistical Area. The classifications provide a nationally consistent set of delineations for collecting, tabulating, and publishing Federal statistics for geographic areas. OMB maintains CBSAs solely for statistical purposes. Every decade, OMB reviews and updates the Standards for Delineating CBSAs (CBSA standards), which describe the data sources and methods OMB uses to determine which geographic areas are to be designated CBSAs, prior to their application to new decennial census data. OMB updated CBSA standards on July 16, 2021 (86 FR 37770), prior to applying them to 2020 Census data. The Metropolitan Areas Protection and Standardization Act of 2021, or the MAPS Act, (31 U.S.C. 6102, <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) prohibits agencies from automatically propagating OMB's standards for non-statistical use by any domestic assistance program unless the agency determines that the propagation: (1) supports the purpose of the program; and (2) is in the public interest. (31 U.S.C. 6309(a)(2)(A)) Propagation of the standards for non-statistical use by domestic assistance programs must be done through a notice and comment rulemaking. (31 U.S.C. 6309(a)(2)(B)) HUD's Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD), Office of Housing—Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and Office of Public and Indian Housing (PIH) use CBSAs to administer their programs listed in Table 1. The Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) also uses CBSA definitions to calculate Fair Market Rents, Area Median Family Income Estimates and Income Limits. This proposed rule describes, for each of its affected programs, how HUD uses CBSA definitions, how the use of new CBSA standards support the purposes of the programs, and that the adoption of the new CBSAs in the operations of these programs is in the public interest. HUD welcomes comments on all aspects of this proposed rule. <GPOTABLE COLS="2" OPTS="L2,nj,i1" CDEF="s200,xs45"> <TTITLE>Table 1—HUD Uses of CBSAs</TTITLE> <CHED H="1">Use</CHED> <CHED H="1">HUD Office</CHED> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Community Development Block Grant Program</ENT> <ENT>CPD.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery Program</ENT> <ENT>CPD.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS Program</ENT> <ENT>CPD.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">HOME Investment Partnerships (HOME) Program</ENT> <ENT>CPD.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Housing Trust Fund (HTF) Program</ENT> <ENT>CPD.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Continuum of Care</ENT> <ENT>CPD.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG)</ENT> <ENT>CPD.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">FHA's Title II Program (loan limits)</ENT> <ENT>Housing.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Choice Neighborhoods Initiative</ENT> <ENT>PIH.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Difficult Development Area and Qualified Census Tract Designations</ENT> <ENT>PD&R.</ENT> </ROW> <ROW> <ENT I="01">Fair Market Rents, Area Median Family Income, and Income Limits</ENT> <ENT>PD&R.</ENT> </ROW> </GPOTABLE> <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Use of CBSAs in HUD Programs</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Fair Market Rents, Area Median Family Income, and Income Limits</HD> HUD uses CBSAs to calculate Fair Market Rents (FMRs), HUD's Area Median Family Income (HAMFI) estimates, and Income Limits (ILs). FMRs, HAMFI, and ILs are addressed together because they incorporate MSA definitions in substantially identical ways and the presence of interacting calculations in the determination of these “program parameters.” That is, FMRs, HAMFI estimates, and ILs share the same geography in any given fiscal year. FMRs are an estimate of the amount of money that would cover gross rents (rent and utility expenses) on 40 percent of the rental housing units in an area. FMRs are used in several HUD programs, including determining the maximum amount a Housing Choice Voucher will cover. ILs, which are derived from HAMFIs (and in some cases, FMRs) set eligibility income levels for HUD programs as well as various other federal programs and maximum rent levels for housing supported by the Low-Income Housing Credit. From the inception of FMRs, HUD has generally considered MSAs to be good proxies for housing markets as they have been historically based on home-to-work commuting interactions as the principal means of identifying component geography to be combined. HUD has always also made exceptions for MSAs where boundaries extended beyond the actual housing market. Following the 2000 revisions that created CBSAs, HUD began making far more exceptions to the use of OMB-defined MSAs in FMRs to avoid large changes in FMR values due largely to geographic definition changes of MSAs. Since the promulgation of regulations mandating the use of “Small Area FMRs” estimated at the ZIP-code level in selected FMR areas, HUD has largely stopped incorporating new counties added to MSAs into FMR areas, instead maintaining separate “HUD Metro FMR Areas” (HMFAs). Currently, for computations of FMR estimates HUD uses the MSAs to define which areas are in HUD Metro FMR Areas or defines the FMR area as coterminous with the MSA a ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 24k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━