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HUD’s Office of Policy Development & Research recently posted new research from data gathered on the housing experiences of the LGBTQI+ community. This community is defined by HUD researchers as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and individuals whose orientations differ from those who identify as heterosexual and cisgender.
After a cooldown early in the pandemic, rental housing demand has come back aggressively in the second year, reducing vacancy rates and driving up rents. So says Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies (JCHS) recently released annual “America’s Rental Housing 2022” report. The new report finds that rents in 77 of 150 markets analyzed increased by double digits in the third quarter of 2021, compared to a year earlier. And the vacancy rate for all rental units was at only 5.8 percent in the third quarter of 2021.
The 2021 Appropriations Act tasked HUD with studying the feasibility of creating a national evictions database. The database would collect information on three types of evictions: formal court-ordered evictions, extra-legal evictions (unlawful or self-evictions), and administrative evictions (PHA evictions of public housing residents). HUD’s Office of Public Policy Development and Research recently issued the feasibility report.
On Nov. 19, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better Act. The passed 220-213 and is now in the Senate for consideration. In a recent letter, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer told lawmakers to prepare for a busy remainder of the year. He has set a Christmas deadline for passing the Build Back Better Act. The timing is significant, since the proposal extends a key aid program, the expanded monthly child tax credit, that’s set to expire at the end of the year.
In an Oct. 27 webinar presented by HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research, HUD announced the results of a Census Bureau Household Pulse survey that gathered data of COVID-19 vaccine status among persons living in public and assisted housing. The Household Pulse Survey is designed to quickly and efficiently deploy data collected on how people’s lives have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. HUD cross-checked the survey data with its own administrative data to verify which survey respondents were HUD-assisted households and their demographics.
On Nov. 3, the House Rules Committee released amended text for the Build Back Better Act. The amended text includes $150 billion in funding for affordable housing and community development. If enacted, this bill would provide historic levels of funding for housing.
Recently, more than 20 major federal agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and HUD came out with new climate adaptation plans. The plans started from an executive order from President Biden calling for a whole-of-government approach to addressing climate change. The idea is to “embed adaptation and resilience planning and implementation” throughout agencies’ programs and operations, and to continually update those plans.
On Sept. 28, HUD published a Federal Register notice announcing the extension of the National Standards for the Physical Inspection of Real Estate and Associated Protocols (NSPIRE) to April 30, 2023. The NSPIRE demonstration is a part of HUD's efforts to test the overhaul of 20-year-old inspection protocols. The program tests new approaches for making certain thousands of public housing authorities and private owners provide housing that’s safe and livable.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury released updated Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) spending data through Aug. 31. The data shows that state and local ERA programs have distributed more than 1.4 million payments to households, totaling more than $7.7 billion to support the housing stability of vulnerable renters.
On Sept. 1, the White House released a fact sheet on the Biden administration’s efforts to increase the affordable housing supply. The plan is to create 100,000 additional affordable homes for homeowners and renters over the next three years, with an emphasis on the lower and middle segments of the market.
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