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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 po...

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.

In an effort to preserve and improve critically needed affordable housing for low-income seniors, HUD recently announced a significant expansion of its Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) to facilitate capital investment in senior housing developments assisted through HUD's Section 202 Supportive Housing for the Elderly Project Rental Assistance Contracts (PRAC).

HUD is seeking assisted housing owners and management agents interested in receiving technical assistance (TA) to support their establishment of a Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) program in one or more of the properties they own or manage. The TA will help owners/agents get ready to successfully execute the program by working through the steps of program start-up, launch, and initial operation.

HUD’s Real Estate Assessment Center (REAC) has expanded the number of inspection items open for feedback from five items to 65 items before REAC fully implements HUD’s National Standards for the Physical Inspection of Real Estate (NSPIRE) model demonstration. This is part of HUD’s efforts to change the 20-year-old REAC physical inspection system to better reflect the physical condition of privately owned, HUD-subsidized housing. HUD is seeking PHAs and...

HUD recently announced a new Foster Youth to Independence (FYI) Initiative that will offer housing vouchers to local public housing authorities to prevent or end homelessness among young adults under the age of 25 who are leaving, or have recently left, the foster care system without a home to go to.

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) recently cleared HUD’s proposed changes to the disparate impact regulations. The update to HUD’s 2013 disparate impact rule would require plaintiffs to meet a five-step threshold to prove unintentional discrimination, replacing the current three-step “burden-shifting” approach.

President Trump recently signed a budget deal that increases federal spending and lifts the nation’s borrowing limit. The new law suspends the debt ceiling through July 2021, removing the threat of a default during the 2020 elections, and raises domestic and military spending by more than $320 billion compared to existing law over the next two fiscal years.