Senate Appropriations Committee Approves FY 2013 HUD Appropriations Bill

In contrast with prior years the Senate Appropriations Committee has passed S. 2322, the FY 2013 Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (THUD) Appropriations bill. This is the first time in memory that the Senate has acted before the House. House Committee sources say that its THUD Subcommittee is waiting final action on the transportation authorization bill, which will soon go to a House-Senate conference committee. The Senate Appropriations Committee moved the THUD bill along with the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bills to blunt criticism from Senate Republicans that Democrats had failed to pass a budget resolution.

Senate majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) countered that there was no0 need to pass a budget resolution in the Senate since the overall ceiling of $1.047 trillion was included in the Budget Enforcement Act of 2011, which resolved the debt ceiling crisis. Earlier this spring the House passed its version of the budget resolution with an overall discretionary ceiling $19 billion below that amount.

As reported earlier, the Senate bill includes a $152 million increase in Community Development Block Grant formula funds to $3.1 billion, compared to President Obama’s budget request for level funding at $2.948 billion. This increase partially restores the $1 billion cut in CDBG formula grants that occurred in FY 2011 and 2012. This is a hard-fought victory for NACCED and others who lobbied individual members of the THUD Appropriations Subcommittee for the increase. Both Senate THUD Subcommittee Chair Patty Murray (D-WA) and ranking member Susan Collins (R-ME) said they were pleased to be able to find the funding to increase CDBG. This was not easy as the discretionary funding allocation for transportation and housing and urban development programs is set at $53 billion, $4 billion below the FY 2012 level.

In an attempt to pre-empt the House, the Senate bill contains specific language permitting grantees to spend up to 20% of their grant for planning and management. The FY 2012 House version of the THUD bill would have reduced that amount to 10%. NACCED and others succeeded in knocking that provision out of the final FY 2012 bill.

The HOME program is level funded in the bill at $1 billion, the same amount as the President’s budget request. The report accompanying the FY 2013 bill states:

The Committee has retained bill language from FY 2012 designed to reform and strengthen the HOME program. These reforms sought to address criticism raised by the HUD- OIG [Inspector General] and media about languishing projects, unqualified developers and lax oversight by the Department. The Committee notes that HUD has published a proposed rule that will permanently incorporate these and other reforms into HUD regulations. Once the rule is finalized the Committee will evaluate if the reform provisions included in this bill are still necessary.

The HOME program reforms include:

• Funds not used to complete projects within four years must be repaid. This deadline can be extended for one year if HUD determines that the failure to complete the project is beyond the control of the Participating Jurisdiction;

• The Participating Jurisdiction must certify that it has conducted an underwriting review, assessed developer capacity and fiscal soundness and examined neighborhood market conditions to ensure adequate need for each project;

• Homeownership units which cannot be sold to an eligible homebuyer within 6 months must be turned into rental units;

• No funds may be awarded to a Community Housing Development Organization (CHDO) that cannot demonstrate that it has staff with demonstrated development experience.

The report accompanying the bill further states that”… HUD has established a process that automatically cancels projects that have not spent funds in the first 12 months after funds are committed to them. HUD established this process to discourage Participating Jurisdictions from committing funds to projects before they are ready.” The report describes this as a useful oversight tool and directs HUD to require Participating Jurisdictions to validate project readiness for cancelled projects that they wish to restart.

The Senate bill provides $50 million for the "Sustainable Communities Initiative,” the same amount provided in FY 2012 and the President’s FY 2013 budget request. Of the total, $12.5 million is set-aside for metropolitan areas of less than 500,000 in population. The grants are intended to support regional planning activities that integrate transportation and land use planning to foster reform and reduce barriers to achieve affordable, economically viable and sustainable communities.

Section 8 tenant-based rent subsidy contract are funded at $19.4 billion under S. 2322, $482 million above the FY 2012 level. This is keeping with the THUD Subcommittee’s priorities to provide housing and services to the Nation’s most vulnerable. Included in this amount is $17.5 billion for renewal of current housing choice vouchers, $1.58 billion for program administration, $75 million for 10,000 new HUD-Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) and $60 million for the Family Self-Sufficiency program. The bill also includes $9.8 billion for the project-based Section 8 program, $536 million above the FY 2012 level and, according to the committee, will be sufficient to renew all of these subsidy contracts for a full 12 months.

For homeless housing assistance the bill provides a total of $2.15 billion. Included in this amount is at least $286 million for the new Emergency Solutions Grant program to prevent families from becoming homeless, or rapidly re-house that are already homeless. The total funding level is $85 million below the President’s request but $244.8 million above the FY 2012 level. It includes full funding for all rent subsidy contract renewals.

A total of $135 million is included in the bill for housing counseling. This includes $55 million for HUD’s counseling activities and $80 million for the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling program that began in FY 2008.

The Public Housing Capital Fund gets $1.99 billion under the Senate bill, $110 million above the FY 2012 level. The bill also includes$4.6 billion for the Public Housing Operating Fund, up $629 billion over this year’s level. The Administration’s "Choice Neighborhoods Initiative,” which is an expansion of the HOPE VI demolition and replacement of severely distressed public housing to all distressed assisted housing gets $120 million, down $30 million from the amount requested in President Obama’s FY 2013 budget.

The Self-Help and Assisted Homeownership opportunity Program would be funded at $53.5 million to assist low-income homebuyers willing to contribute "sweat equity” toward the construction of their homes. The President’s budget did not request funding for this program.

Finally, S. 2322 includes $375 million for the Section 202 elderly housing grant program, the same level as FY 2012 but $100 million below the President’s request. The Section 811 disabled housing program would be reduced by $15 million below the President’s request of $150 million and the FY 2012 enacted level.

It is not clear if, or when, this bill may go to the Senate floor. It is widely expected that Congress will postpone action on the FY 2013 appropriations until a lame duck session following the November election.

NACCED and NCDA Offer recommended Changes to IDIS

In an April 19 th letter to Mercedes Marquez, Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, NACCED and the National Community Development Association offered a wide ranging set of recommendations on improving HUD’s IDIS. The recommendations are a compilation of the results of a survey conducted by each association earlier this spring.

The letter reads as follows:

The National Community Development Association (NCDA) and the National Association for County Community and Economic Development (NACCED) have worked with our collective memberships over the past two months on the development of recommendations for improving IDIS. This work included the development of a survey to members to collect feedback on recommendations for making the system easier to use and more efficient. The attached document provides an outline of the major survey areas and detailed comments and recommendations on improving IDIS from grantees who operate and use the system at the local level. The last part of the document also includes recommendations our organizations made to the HUD Regulations Division on IDIS last May as part of HUD’s quest to streamline programs. We understand some of the attached recommendations may be incorporated into the new Consolidated Planning enhancement effort and we want to thank you and your staff for your hard work on this project over the last two years. It will truly make a difference in the way grantees plan and report their program activities and accomplishments.

Out of approximately 350 NCDA members, 98 members (or nearly 28%) completed the survey. Out of approximately 115 NACCED members,42 members (or nearly 37%) completed the survey. The survey was comprised of ten questions which gauged practitioner satisfaction with the system in the following areas: project set-up, funding projects, the drawdown process, creating reports, and overall experience of using the system.

The results from this section of the survey are as follows:

(1) How satisfied are you with the process of ADDING (setting up) projects/activities in IDIS? 59%

(2) How satisfied are you with the process of FUNDING project/activities in IDIS? 45%

(3) How satisfied are you with the DRAWDOWN process in IDIS? 49%

(4) How satisfied are you with the process of creating REPORTS in IDIS? 24%

(5) How satisfied are you with the OVERALL EXPERIENCE of using IDIS? 58%

The survey respondents seemed moderately satisfied with the process of adding project/activities in IDIS along with the overall experience of using the system. On the other hand, they were lukewarm to the process of funding project/activities in IDIS and to the drawdown process. Most noticeably, they were very dissatisfied with the process of creating reports in IDIS.

If you selected "Dissatisfied/Very Dissatisfied” for any of the questions, why? What can be done to improve this?

Reports, funding, and the drawdown process in IDIS were the three areas where respondents seemed most dissatisfied, with the creation of reports being the area of highest dissatisfaction. Respondents were asked to comment on how the system could be improved in these areas. The following provides a consolidation of the responses.

CREATING REPORTS

Reports are difficult to download, export and print. The report module is hard to navigate and the report functions are confusing. The process is very slow and involves too many screens. Moreover, according to the survey respondents, it is difficult to go back and make corrections in reports. Many of the respondents commented on the fact that the act of printing a report takes too many steps and too many options that leave the formatting of reports daunting and cumbersome to users. For example, several respondents referenced the PR03 report as taking a lot of time to re-format to make it printable for the CAPER. Many respondents commented that the report function encompasses too many screens. Many other respondents commented that the system should automatically pull-up grantee information in each report. Others noted that changes made to a report cannot be viewed until the next day and that it takes a lot of time to run a report, make corrections and wait until the next day to run another report and repeat the process. Many found the reports to be impossible to reformat for public information purposes and commented that HUD needs to change the system to allow grantees to create customizable reports. More importantly, most of the respondents commented that HUD needs to develop reports that grantees can print and put into the CAPER.

Other comments on Reports:

• The system times you out if you don’t continue to refresh the main screen.

• Revisions are not accounted for accurately.

• PR03 and PR06 reports in BOSMAC were much more user friendly and easily adaptable.

Recommendations:

• Start with a better platform that can run parallel with testing to determine data quality and integrity.

• Simplify the report module.

• Provide real time reports.

• Allow grantees to customize reports.

• Make the reports easier to access and download. Make sure the reports capture the correct information. Put a field for the grantee’s project/activity number on every report that lists activities and/or project. Develop reports that grantees can print and put into the CAPER so that time is not wasted on developing a narrative report on items that should be able to come directly off of IDIS.

• Allow the system to automatically pull up grantee information in each report

• Provide better instructions within the screen to walk new or occasional users through the process.

• Make the reports easier to access and download.

DRAWDOWN

Recommendations:

• Drawdown of program income in IDIS should be fixed to work like the legacy IDIS, so that it doesn’t require revisions to activity funding for every program income draw.

• The drawdown process needs to be improved. As it stands revised vouchers still appear in the calculations of PR26 and therefore draw amounts are inflated.

FUNDING

Recommendations:

• Funding screen needs to include available balance and last draw date. The screen should automatically calculate the amount available to draw.

• Total draw amount should be on each voucher.

• Please make program income NOT activity specific. It used to be program specific so you could use it with different activities to draw down and use but this makes it difficult to "use program income first.”

OTHER

Recommendations:

• Provide training offered on the system.

• Hire more staff at the Technical Assistance Unit to answer the phone lines.

What areas of IDIS do you find duplicative?

Respondents were asked to comment on areas of duplication within the system. The adding (setting up) of projects involved the most duplication of effort, according to respondents. Many respondents commented that in setting up projects in IDIS the system requires that they be set up as both a project and an activity, which causes double entry. The project and activity set-up screens often ask for duplicate information. This could explain the inaccuracy of the CDBG data at the national level. Others noted problems with data calculation and information input. For example, when adding program income to an activity, the system does not automatically sum the previous income and the new program income. It has to be manually added and entered into the system. Respondents commented that it would be helpful if the system automatically populated the screens (uploaded data) so that grantees wouldn’t have the enter the data more than once.

• Having to save every screen is bothersome. Having to enter the information into the CPMP and in IDIS is duplicative. Allow grantees to upload the project/financial form from the CPMP project sheets and summaries.

• The questions/requirements of the Action Plan and CAPER are duplicative.

• The screens should be rolled into one.

Recommendations:

• Alignment of IDIS with the Action Plan and the CAPER, so when information is entered into IDIS, it is automatically populated within both documents.

• Create auto-fill functions to avoid grantees having to repeatedly enter the same data.

 What data should be dropped from IDIS?

While most respondents did not mind collecting the performance measurement information, some questioned the effectiveness of the way the information is being reported. One respondent said the following, "The performance measurement data is canned – really what is a suitable living environment?” Otherwise, the survey respondents were fine with the data elements that are currently being collected within IDIS.

What data points should be collected in IDIS that aren’t currently being collected now?

Some of the respondents suggested that the system should collect the following data elements.

• Overcrowded housing and poverty down to the block group level

• Matching/leveraging details for HOME

• The number of persons served in a household

• MBE/WBE and Section 3 information (to aid in eliminating extra reports)

• More visual elements such as photos or maps

• Track program income in IDIS

 Are there any other comments or suggestions you would like to share?

Finally, the survey respondents were asked to provide any other comments or suggestions on the system. The following changes to the system were suggested.

• When setting up or funding an activity, if an error occurs, an explanation should pop up on the screen showing what is incorrect and how to correct it.

• It would be helpful to see the different amounts drawn down that make up the total drawn against the activity. Too much time is wasted running a report for just one activity.

• Prevent grantees from being timed out of IDIS when creating reports.

• Allow the passwords to remain active for a longer period and send a prompt notice a few days prior to the password expiration.

• Seek grantee input when creating/modifying canned reports.

• Modify project level report to include only open reports (e.g., omit closed projects)

• Provide HUD field office staff access to the same screens as the grantees.

• Navigating the tiers is confusing. Replace it with a drop down menu.

• Improve the capability of the system to put IDIS information into Excel.

• Improve the capacity of the system to cross check information.

• Keep the most current version of the IDIS manual prominently linked on each IDIS screen.

• The Save function should allow you to continue to other screen pages without taking you back to the initial/beginning screen.

• Get rid of the PR26 report where grantees have to enter some data but not all data. It skews the numbers.

• Provide a spell check function.

• In searching for an activity to fund, the summary list that currently shows program year, project number, activity number and name should also show the amount funded and drawn for each activity. That would make it a lot easier to see the status of each activity without either fully opening each one in IDIS or running a report for all projects.

• Closing out projects can be a real challenge (e.g., IDIS does not provide close-out fields for rental group homes). There’s no way to input all the residents and their ethnic characteristics.

• Allow the system to upload the information on the CPMP tool (project sheets and summaries) to IDIS.

• Sub-funding and sub-grants are confusing in the HOME program. The amount of the available sub-funds are not included in the total HOME amount.

• More training on IDIS, both hands-on training (with participants sending in a list of their projects as samples for the training) and live webinars.

• The system should allow mapping of projects.

• The simple fact that there are 90 reports available in IDIS says it all.

• Instruction manual needs to be updated and made more clear.

• The timeout feature for running reports needs to be more flexible, so that when you are running reports, the timeout does not constantly appear.

We ask that HUD use the recommendations made by the survey respondents in moving forward with changes to IDIS as soon as possible. We strongly believe the changes will make the system more reliable, easier to use, more efficient, and provide a better platform for collecting accurate data at the national level. In addition to the survey responses, we would like to call attention to the following comments made by our organizations on IDIS and forwarded to HUD’s Regulation Division on May 2, 2011.

• The IDIS reports that must be pulled in connection to the CAPER are not understandable to the average citizen and make it difficult to invite public comment.

• Please return the capability for grantees to download IDIS reports into WORD. When IDIS was updated from the legacy system to IDIS Online the report function changed the formats in which reports could be downloaded by grantees. Format choices for standard reports are now limited to PDF and Excel. In the legacy system grantees could download reports and save them as WORD files. This per mitted grantees to insert the IDIS reports in the CAPER file, thereby making it easier to save the entire CAPER as one electronic file (WORD and/or Acrobat).

• Further modifications of IDIS should include components that allow for the submission, importing and exporting of data related to Section 3, Contract/Subcontract, MBE/WBE Summary Reports, Semi-Annual Labor Standards Enforcement and the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act Sub-award Reporting System (FSRS).

• Permit grantees to upload Action Plan data directly into IDIS, as with Community 2020.

• The CAPER instructions appear to have been designed more to comply with a review checklist by HUD staff than to communicate to the public. Rewrite the CAPER instructions to help grantees produce a meaningful document that can be better understood by elected officials and the public. The CAPER should be more than a report on funds spent and persons served. It, and the Consolidated Plan, should be a seamless system to report on approved activities.

• HUD field office staff should be better trained on how to obtain IDIS reports from their grantees. It should not be necessary for grantees to print hundreds of pages of IDIS reports for submission to HUD. HUD should only require the submission of those IDIS reports that are essential to the review of the CAPER.

• The CAPER contains the original Annual Performance Report form and the Matching Funds Report form that were created by HUD before IDIS. Craft new IDIS reports that would provide this data to HUD and grantees. Matching funds information should be captured in IDIS in the same level of detail as is required in the HOME Matching Fund Report.

• The CAPER requires financial and services data for entitlement programs, but it does not provide a consistent format for the report of the data in the CAPER narrative. Extract the data from IDIS and produce these data for the CAPER via IDIS reports. CDBG and ESG now have a Financial Summary Report. Add one for HOME. Also, add a Matching Funds Report for ESG.

Please feel free to contact either John Murphy, Executive Director, NACCED, at 202-367-1257 or Vicki Watson, Assistant Director, NCDA, at 202-887-5532 with any questions concerning these recommendations.

Mercedes Marquez to Leave HUD

This week Mercedes Marquez, Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, announced that she was leaving HUD, effective may 18 th. She did not announce any future plans, leaving that announcement to a future time. Mercedes, who was the keynote speaker at NACCED’s 2011 Awards Luncheon in Los Angeles brought a practitioner’s eye to her job and was widely praised for her defense of the HOME program in the wake of a series of biased articles carried in the Washington Post in 2011. She will be missed.

The following comes from Steve Johnson, Director of the Entitlement Communities Division, Office of Block Grant Assistance at HUD Headquarters.

All Grantees

Revised HUD Labor Standards Handbook issued

HUD has released Revision 2 of its Handbook, "Federal Labor Standards Requirements in Housing and Urban Development Programs” (1344.1). This replaces Revision 1, Change 1 which was issued in December 1986. To view the handbook, click here.

State CDBG Colonias Set-Aside Instructions Issued

The instructions on administering the State CDBG Colonias Set-Aside have been re-issued as CPD Notice 12-008.  It is available on HUD’s website and is attached as a PDF file.

2012 State CDBG Final Rule Forthcoming

The State CDBG final rule will be available on the Federal Register’s site on Friday, April 20 th and published in the Federal Register on Monday, April 23. 

Disaster Recovery Programs

All CDBG-DR Grantees

• Substantial Amendment Checklist: DRSI recently created a checklist to assist CPD reps in reviewing Substantial Amendments submitted to HUD.  This checklist is only for substantial amendments, as defined by grantees’ action plans, rather than changes in activities in DRGR. While it can be used for any CDBG-DR grant, CDP reps are reminded note the appropriation-specific sections.

• QPR Submissions: Field Offices are reminded that QPRs are due 30 days after every quarter and must be posted on the grantee’s website within three days of submission. The next QPRs are due April 30 th. For the P.L. 112-55 grantees, the first QPR won’t be required until one full calendar quarter has passed after execution of the grant award, meaning most likely a 1/30/13 deadline.

• CDBG-DR Financial Update: Please see the most recent CDBG-DR expenditure chart from April 3 rd (attached).

P.L. 109-234 and P.L. 110-329 Specific

• Affordable Rental Housing Update: Attached is the most recent Affordable Rental Housing update.  Field offices are reminded to work with their grantees to budget all of their affordable rental housing identified activities in DRGR.

P.L. 112-55 Specific

• Federal Register Notice: The Notice (77FR22583) for P.L. 112-55 has finally been published and can be found here.

• Action Plan Checklist:  The checklist, which is appropriation specific, should be used when reviewing grantees’ Action Plans.  Page numbers beside each section reference where the criteria can be found in the Notice.  Field offices should forward it to grantees so they will get a better understanding of what HUD expects to see in their Action Plans.  As a reminder, grantees have 90 days (July 15 th) to submit their Action Plans to their respective field office.  During the next few weeks, DRSI will schedule a conference call for all of the field offices administering P.L. 112-55 funds to discuss Action Plan submissions and next steps going forward.

Recovery Programs

CRBG-R Update

As of April 16, 2012, 89.23% of CDBG-R funds have been drawn down nationally.  Over $874 million of the $980 million has been drawn down.

• 653 of 1167 grantees (representing $259 million in grant funds) are 100% drawn down, including 15 states.  They represent 56% of all grantees but only 26% of all funds.

• 923 of the 1167 grantees are at least 90% drawn, including 104 of the 172 million-dollar-plus grants and 42 of the 50 states. 

• On a regional basis, the average drawdown rate is over 82% among grantees in all HUD regions, and is over 90% among grantees in HUD regions 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 and 10.

• 112 of the 1167 grantees are below 75% drawn down; they represent 10.5% of all grantees but 54% of all funds not yet drawn down.

• Only 25 grantees are still below 50% drawn; they represent 2.1% of all grantees but 21% of all funds not yet drawn down.  Eight of these are million-dollar-plus grants.  (See the table below for a listing.)  Detroit remains the largest grant still under 50% drawn. 

• Only 5 grantees are less than 10% drawn, New Orleans being the only million-dollar-plus grant. (See table below for a listing.)  Only Paterson, NJ is still at $0 drawn.

• All but $13.2 million of funds have been funded to specific activities in IDIS.  Three grantees have still funded less than 50% of their funds to specific activities.  (See table below for a listing; Stockton, CA and Ft. Pierce, FL have dropped off this list.) 

Expenditure Rates By Type of Grantee (as of 04/15/12)

Other News You Can Use and Funding Opportunities

 From the Minnesota Rural Partners Roundup:

The Department of Labor has issued a NOFA for the YouthBuild program. The program funds vocational training and education in the construction trades for at-risk youth. The deadline to apply is 5/8/2012.  For more information, click here.

Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) Releases a New Guide for Board Members.  RCAP has released a new guidebook to assist members of the board of directors or governing body of small, rural drinking water and wastewater systems.  The Big Guide for Small Systems: A Resource for Board Members is a comprehensive guide to the oversight role a board member has in governing a small utility.  This is the newest in a series of guides that RCAP has recently published. Copies of all guides, including this newest one, are available in PDF format on the RCAP website, or by visiting MAP's Guides and Publications page.

Rural Wealth Creation: Concepts, Strategies, and Measures.  This report presents a conceptual framework for rural wealth creation, drawing upon the U.S. and international development literature. The framework emphasizes the importance of multiple types of assets (physical, financial, human, intellectual, natural, social, political, and cultural capital) and the economic, institutional, and policy context in which rural wealth strategies are devised. The report discusses the role of wealth creation in the rural development process, how wealth can be created in rural communities, and how its accumulation and effects can be measured.  Click here for more information.

In early 2012, HUD announced the creation of the Sustainable Resource Center website, a one-stop resource that highlights projects and best practices from sustainability projects around the country.  According to the web site, the "Sustainable Communities Resource Center is intended to provide the public with a comprehensive set of information that supports local and regional strategies, with a particular emphasis on sustainable housing and planning." Categories in the Resource Center include: economic competiveness, housing and transportation choices, regional planning, green building, and rural and tribal sustainability.  In conjunction wi th the unveiling of the Resource Center, HUD announced the debut of Sustainable Communities Enews, which "highlights information on emerging best practices that America's communities and regions are generating to make our communities more economically competitive, inclusive, and energy efficient."

 From the commercial website Grantstation.com:

The Department of Labor’s Senior Community Service Employment Program provides National Grants to support employment and training initiatives targeted specifically to low-income older individuals who want to enter or re-enter the workforce. Proposed activities should work to promote useful opportunities in community service job training and to move program participants into unsubsidized employment, where appropriate. The application deadline is May 10, 2012.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has funds available for Housing Service Personnel. The Service Coordinators in Multifamily Housing Program provides support for the employment and support of service coordinators in insured and assisted housing properties for the elderly or nonelderly persons with disabilities. Service coordinators are responsible for assuring that elderly residents, especially those who are frail or at risk, and non-elderly residents with disabilities are linked to the supportive services they need to continue living independently in their current homes. The application deadline is May 14, 2012.

Pertinent attachments for news from Steve Johnson:

Substantial Amendment Checklist.pdf

Disaster Recovery Financial Update 3 Apr 2012.pdf

Affordable Rental Housing Cumulative Expenditures 3-27-12.pdf

77FR22583.pdf

Action Plan Checklist_2011 Disasters.xlsx