Council on Housing (COH) held a public session today at 2:00 p.m. at Buena Vista, Newark, Delaware.  At this meeting, Mr. Anas Ben Addi, Director of the Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA), announced that the Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) comment process was being revised to include two additional steps before the Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) goes to Governor Jack Markell for final review and approval. The Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA) will publish:

• a summary of all comments received to the draft Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP); and
• its responses to all comments received to the draft Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP).

The comments and responses are expected to be posted to the list serve by next week and the Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA) is expected to meet with the Governor soon thereafter.  According to Mr. Ben Addi, there were many written and public comments to the draft 2011 Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP).

This is a huge step forward as these comments were never formally released to the public or responded to in the past.  According to Mr. Ben Addi, while the Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA) plans to incorporate some of the comments into this year’s Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP), this process also ensures that the dialogue regarding the Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) will not end and will continue so that it can impact next year’s Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) as well.  Thus, comments that have not been incorporated into the 2011 Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) will still be up for discussion next year. As Ruth Sokolowski, Vice Chair of the Council on Housing (COH), stated, this change provides for a more “deliberative process on comments to the QAP.”