The U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is proposing new regulatory requirements for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program to boost the program’s performance and accountability.

The HOME Investment Partnerships Program provides approximately $2 billion to states and localities to develop affordable housing for low- and very low-income households.  A couple months ago, I posted an investigation conducted by the Washington Post alleging that many HOME Investment Partnerships Program projects were stalled or abandoned with no oversight from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

According to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) press release, the proposed requirements would:

• Require state and local governments to adopt policies and procedures to improve their oversight of projects, develop a system for assessing the relative risk of projects, and more closely monitor their HOME-funded sub-recipients;

• Require state and local governments to assess a developer’s capacity and the long-term viability of the project, before they commit HOME funds to a project;

• Require more frequent reporting by state and local ‘participating jurisdictions’ to enable HUD to more closely track projects once they’re under way; and

• Set a higher ‘performance bar’ by establishing specific timeframes for taking appropriate corrective actions against participating jurisdictions who fail to complete what they started.

The U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD) will also be improving the Integrated Disbursement and Information System (IDIS), which is the data collection and reporting mechanism for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program.