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The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report with priority recommendations to HUD, outlining 17 “priority open” recommendations. These are GAO recommendations that warrant priority attention from heads of key departments or agencies because their implementation could:

Congress created the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) in fiscal year 2012 to test whether public housing agencies (PHAs) could leverage Section 8 rental assistance contracts to raise private debt and equity to make public housing capital improvements and thereby preserve low-income housing.

By a vote of 84-9, the Senate recently approved its fiscal year 2020 (FY20) HUD appropriations bill. The House passed its HUD FY20 appropriations bill in June. And now, with the passage of the Senate bill, the two bills must be reconciled before a final spending bill to ensure continued funding for federal programs can be enacted. House and Senate Appropriations Committees must agree on spending limits for each of the 12 subcommittees, including the one that funds HUD.

HUD recently announced that the Department of Justice negotiated a settlement with the Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport (HACB) settling allegations that HACB discriminated against persons with disabilities by failing to provide accessible units and ignoring their requests for reasonable accommodations.

HUD recently awarded $1.5 million to nearly a dozen housing authorities to assist young people aging out of foster care and who are at risk of experiencing homelessness. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates that more than 20,000 young people age out of foster care each year. The National Center for Housing and Child Welfare (NCHCW) estimates that approximately 25 percent of these young people experience homelessness within four years of leaving foster care and an even higher share are precariously housed.

HUD’s Office of Multifamily Housing Programs (MFHP) recently announced the launch of three webpages to support multifamily owners with the operation and preservation of their sites. The goal of these new resources is to provide stakeholders with current and accessible information and the necessary tools that will support the availability of affordable housing for the most vulnerable.

Each year, National Lead Poisoning Prevention Week is a call to bring together individuals, organizations, industry, and state, tribal, and local governments to increase lead poisoning prevention awareness in an effort to reduce childhood exposure to lead. Approximately 3.6 million families have young children who live in homes contaminated with lead-based paint hazards. Children of low-income families living in older unassisted housing face the greatest risk of lead poisoning.

In 2012, HUD embarked upon a new program to address the capital needs of severely distressed public housing. HUD recently released the results of an evaluation of the Department’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD). The report found significant evidence that RAD is stimulating billions of dollars in capital investment, improving living conditions for low-income residents, and enhancing the financial health of these critical affordable housing resources.

HUD has published the fiscal year 2020 (FY20) Fair Market Rents (FMRs), which are now released only on huduser.gov. The FMRs are effective Oct. 1. In general, the FMR for an area is the amount that would be needed to pay the gross rent (shelter rent plus utilities) of privately owned, decent, and safe rental housing of a modest (non-luxury) nature with suitable amenities and is set at the 40th percentile of the distribution of gross rents.

The budget agreement signed into law on Aug. 2 by President Trump raised defense and nondefense discretionary spending caps for fiscal years 2020 and 2021. The deal allows for, but doesn’t accomplish on its own, enactment of this year's FY20 appropriations bills. Before the new spending caps were established, the House passed several of its FY20 bills, including those that fund HUD. The House HUD appropriations bill passed the House on June 25.