HUD’s Office of Affordable Housing Programs, which administers the HOME Investment Partnership (HOME) program, issued a Memorandum on December 4 revising and extending an April 10 Memorandum that provided a number of waivers to HOME regulations in order to address immediate housing needs and to prevent the spread of the coronavirus (see Memo, 4/20).
The December 4 Memorandum extends all statutory suspensions and regulatory waivers outlined in the April Memorandum from December 31, 2020 to September 30, 2021. It also provides a new waiver of the maximum per unit subsidy limit as well as a new waiver of the income documentation requirement for owners of a HOME projects in the sixth year of the affordability period.
In addition, the December 4 Memorandum revises several of the waivers provided in the April Memorandum, including:
- Waiving the requirements for initial and annual Housing Quality Standard (HQS) inspection of units occupied by tenants assisted with HOME Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) (see a companion article in this issue of Memo discussing a separate December 4 Memorandum devoted solely to TBRA)
- Excluding from a household’s income self-certification, Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation FPUC, (a CARES Act program that provided people receiving regular unemployment assistance an additional $600 in federal benefits each week for 18 weeks up to July 31) and Lost Wages Supplemental Payment Assistance (the extra unemployment assistance of $300 per week plus $100 per week if a person’s state provided a 25% match)
- Prohibiting HOME project owners receiving HOME operating reserve assistance from also collecting rent from tenants in HOME-assisted units to cover the same costs paid with the HOME funds
The December 4 Memorandum also expands the waiver that permits participating jurisdictions to use HOME funds for operating reserve assistance for troubled HOME projects in order to extend the availability of HOME funds to additional HOME-assisted rental projects.
The December 4 Memorandum is at: https://bit.ly/3m28jcL
More information about the HOME program is on page 5-5 of NLIHC’s 2020 Advocates’ Guide.