Use of Federal Real Property To Assist the Homeless

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT <CFR>24 CFR Part 581</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. FR 6119-F-02]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 2506-AC49</RIN> GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION <CFR>41 CFR Part 102-75</CFR> <RIN>RIN 3090-AK46</RIN> DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES <CFR>45 CFR Part 12a</CFR> <RIN>RIN 0991-AC14</RIN> <SUBJECT>Use of Federal Real Property To Assist the Homeless</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Department of Housing and Urban Development, General Services Administration, and Department of Health and Human Services. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the General Services Administration (GSA), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) (the Agencies) administer the Title V program, which makes suitable Federal real properties categorized as underutilized, unutilized, excess, or surplus available to States, local government agencies, and 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organizations for use to assist the homeless. This final rule incorporates required statutory changes and current practices; updates references and terminology that are now outdated; and revises procedures for more efficient program administration in the Agencies' regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> <E T="03">Effective date:</E> December 13, 2024. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> For information regarding each agency's implementation of these regulations, the contact information for that agency follows. The Agencies welcome and are 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> <E T="03">Department of Housing and Urban Development:</E> Brian Fitzmaurice, Senior Program Advisor, Office of Special Needs Assistance Programs, Community Planning and Development, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 451 7th Street SW, Room 7262, Washington, DC 20140; <E T="03">title5@hud.gov;</E> telephone number 202-905-3869 (this is not a toll-free number). <E T="03">General Services Administration:</E> Chris Coneeney, Director, Real Property Policy Division, Office of Government-wide Policy, at 202-208-2956 or <E T="03">chris.coneeney@gsa.gov.</E> For information pertaining to status or publication schedules, contact the Regulatory Secretariat Division at 202-501-4755 or GSA at <E T="03">RegSec@gsa.gov.</E> <E T="03">Department of Health and Human Services:</E> Theresa M. Ritta, Program Manager, Real Property Management Services; Telephone: (301) 443-2265; Email: <E T="03">rpb@psc.hhs.gov.</E> </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background</HD> In 1991, the Agencies jointly published a regulation (56 FR 23789 (May 24, 1991)), codified at 24 CFR part 581, 41 CFR part 102-75, and 45 CFR part 12a, implementing the provisions of Title V of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act (McKinney-Vento Act or Title V) (42 U.S.C. 11411). The 1991 regulation established procedures for collecting information from landholding agencies about excess, surplus, unutilized, and underutilized properties under their control and the criteria for determining the properties' suitability for use as homeless assistance. It also provided procedures and timelines for the application process and agency review of submitted applications to use such properties for homeless assistance. The regulation has not been updated since its publication in 1991. Since that time, however, the McKinney-Vento Act has been amended several times by new legislation, including the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing Act (sec. 1003, Pub. L. 111-22, 123 Stat. 1632, 1664-65), the Federal Property Management Reform Act of 2016 (Pub. L. 114-318, 130 Stat. 1608), and most significantly, section 22 of the Federal Assets Sales and Transfer Act of 2016 (FASTA) (Pub. L. 114-287, 130 Stat. 1463, 1478 (codified at 42 U.S.C. 11411)). Under section 501 of Title V, HUD handles the suitability determination and HHS processes applications from eligible organizations and monitors transferred property for compliance with programmatic requirements. GSA supports both agencies at various stages throughout the entire process including: by screening real properties reported by a particular agency as excess to determine if they are required for use by any other Federal agency; submitting properties reported to GSA for disposal to HUD for a determination of suitability for use to assist the homeless; and notifying HUD of whether there is a continuing need for the property within the Federal Government after a suitability determination has been made. If there is no continuing Federal need for the property, the property is determined surplus to the needs of the Federal Government, and if HUD determines the property to be suitable, then the property is available for application to HHS for homeless assistance use. Pursuant to 42 U.S.C. 11411(f)(3)(A), if HHS receives and approves an application for surplus property and recommends to GSA that the property be conveyed to the applicant for homeless assistance use, GSA assigns the property to HHS. HHS then deeds or leases the property to the applicant for the purpose(s) stated in the approved application, unless a competing request for the property under 40 U.S.C. 550 is determined by GSA or HHS to be so meritorious and compelling as to outweigh the needs of the homeless. Further details about the suitability determination process and transfer of the property can be found in the proposed rule, “Use of Federal Real Property to Assist the Homeless: Revisions to Regulations,” at 88 FR 16834. As previously noted, FASTA made several changes to the McKinney-Vento Act. Section 22 of FASTA amended the McKinney-Vento Act to allow for HUD's suitability determinations to be posted electronically; to eliminate subsequent posting of previously reported properties determined unsuitable with no changes; to change the timeframes related to how long suitable and available properties are held for homeless assistance use; to change the number of days by which eligible organizations must submit an expression of interest to HHS from 60 days to 30 days from the date of HUD's publication; to create a two-phased application process; to shorten the initial application processing period from 90 days to 75 days; and, if approved, provide the applicant 45 days to submit a final application. If HHS does not approve a final application after approving an initial application, disposal of the property may proceed in accordance with applicable law. In addition to the McKinney-Vento Act and agency regulations, administration of the Title V Program is guided by Federal court decisions, including the March 13, 2017, revised Order in <E T="03">National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty</E> v. <E T="03"> United States Department of Veterans Affairs, </E> 819 F. Supp. 69 (D.D.C. 1993). Subsequent nationwide litigation, including <E T="03">Colorado Coalition for the Homeless</E> v. <E T="03">GSA,</E> No. 18-cv-1008, 2019 WL 2723857 (D.CO. Colo. July, 1, 2019); <E T="03">United States</E> v. <E T="03">Overcoming Love Ministries, Inc.,</E> No. 16-cv-1853, 2018 WL 4054867 (E.D.N.Y. Aug. 24, 2018); and <E T="03">New Life Evangelistic Center, Inc.</E> v. <E T="03">Sebelius,</E> 753 F. Supp. 2d 103 (D.D.C. 2010) have interpreted and applied key provisions of Title V and its regulations. Taking into consideration the Agencies' experience operating the Title V program over the past 30 years, this joint regulation aims to harmonize the joint regulation with Title V, as amended by FASTA and other legislation; incorporate existing policy and practice requirements for the benefit of future applicants; and, for ease of reference, expand portions of the joint regulation that cross-reference other sections of other regulations by incorporating the referenced portions. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. The Proposed Rule</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Collaborative Changes Across HUD, GSA, and HHS's Individual Regulations</HD> On March 20, 2023, the Agencies published for public comment a proposed rule titled “Use of Federal Real Property to Assist the Homeless: Revisions to Regulations.”  <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> The Agencies proposed several changes to establish procedures conforming to FASTA and incorporating other legislative changes. They also sought to codify established policies and processes used to govern the program. For greater readability, in instances where requirements found in other sections of the regulation were referenced by citation, the Agencies proposed to instead incorporate those provisions in each agency's individual regulations. The Agencies also proposed revised suitability criteria for clarity and to address the Government Accountability Office's recommendation in its 2014 report titled “Federal Real Property: More Useful Information to Providers Could Improve the Homeless Assistance Programs.”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> Throughout the proposed rule, the Agencies reorganized and renumbered various existing sections of their respective regulations. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  88 FR 16834. </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>   <E T="03">https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-14-739.pdf.</E> </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD3">1. Definitions</HD> The proposed rule sought to remove definitions that were no longer relevant, revise other definitions to conform to existing legislation, incorporate new definitions, some of which were used but not defined in the Title V regulation; and provide clari ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 267k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━