The Rental Policy Working Group, established by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council (DPC) to align rental housing programs administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the Department of Agriculture and the Department of the Treasury, is seeking comments on its rental alignment proposal.

The proposal, broken into 11 sections, aims to align efforts in the following areas:

• Physical Inspections;

• Income Reporting and Definitions;

• Subsidy Layering Review;

• Reduction in State-to-State Variability for Income Definition;

• Financial Reporting;

• Common Energy Efficiency Requirements;

• Appraisal Primer;

• Market Study Standards;

• Capital Needs Assessment;

• Improve Sharing of Data on Owner Defaults; and

• Compliance (Fair Housing Memorandum of Understanding).

The Rental Policy Working Group has already launched two alignment pilot programs to test solutions for reducing duplicative annual physical inspections on properties and reducing duplicative subsidy layering reviews for project underwriting and approvals.  Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin are participating in the physical inspection alignment pilot program.  Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Wisconsin are participating in the subsidy layering review alignment pilot program.

Stakeholder comments are due by August 26, 2011 via email to harmonization@hud.gov.

Click here for a matrix of the rental alignment proposal.