HUD Publishes Affordable Rental Housing Preservation Resources

HUD’s Office of Recapitalization published two documents that lead owners of HUD-insured and/or assisted multifamily affordable rental properties through the process of developing a preservation strategy for long-term affordability and viability.

The HUD Preservation Workbook: Successful Stewardship of Multifamily Housing Recapitalization is designed to support the decision-making that owners should undertake to preserve their properties as affordable housing. Each chapter has exercises and other resources designed to help owners identify issues and opportunities, develop a preservation plan, and do basic financial analyses to determine the viability of potential preservation strategies.

The Workbook is meant to be used in tandem with a Recapitalization Excel Tool that contains numerous spreadsheets into which an owner may enter baseline information about the property, its current Section 8 contracts and financing structure, financial performance, and physical condition.

Used together, the two documents will help a property owner answer questions about potential preservation strategies, such as how to finance capital improvements, whether a property needs new financing, and what level of rental assistance might be available to the property.

Information about HUD’s project-based rental assistance programs, including preservation issues, is on page 4-22 of NLIHC’s 2017 Advocates’ Guide.