HUD Requesting Comments, due 5/23, on the AFFH Assessment Tool

This HUD trend of refining and reinforcing the AFFH rule confirms that any information provided to HUD will be used against our local communities.  That said, HUD is currently soliciting comments to the six questions below about the local government assessment tool, click https://goo.gl/hsUZkL.  Consider how to reply, although the whole process is a sham, demonstrating over and over again that HUD does what HUD wants to do to achieve it’s central government agenda.

Note: The replies to questions in red below have officially been submitted as of 05-23-2016.

HUD encourages not only program participants, but interested persons to submit comments regarding the information collection requirements in this proposal.  Comments must be received by May 23, 2016, referring to [Docket No. FR–5173–N–10].  To send, follow directions in the ADDRESSES section at the bottom of this post.

Blah Blah Blah, HUD is seeking feedback on the items listed below. The specific items under consideration are intended to modify and improve existing data items or to better facilitate program participants in completing the Assessment Tool.  The public and, in particular affected HUD program participants are invited to comment on the following specific questions. For each of these questions, in addition to answering the question, HUD asks commenters to explain why the issue or issues posed in each question either would or would not be helpful from a fair housing [communist] perspective to have this additional level of detail presented in the question.

1. Should R/ECAPs (Racially or Ethnically Concentrated Areas of Poverty) be amended to exclude college students from the calculation of poverty rate?

www.affh.net comment:  Current and future college students in R/ECAPs will offset and reduce disparities due to the higher achievement and average household income levels; especially for part time students who work full time.  Including students also has a direct effect on the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Tool (AFFHT) with regard to measuring education levels (school proficiency data map), employment (Labor Engagement Index), poverty (Poverty Index with race/ethnicity, national origin),  and english speaking (Limited English Proficiency, LEP) households.  In summary college students raise the goodness of the R/ECAP statistics closing the gap with more affluent entitlement jurisdictions.  Higher achieving black and hispanic families in R/ECAPs with college students similarly lower the R/ECAP statistical poverty rate. 

Excluding college students in R/ECAPs allows HUD to effectively pick winners and losers by increasing R/ECAP poverty rates thus further empowering HUD’s ability to enforce AFFH. 

Lastly, the number of millennials is now equal to the number of baby boomers and part of what is driving suburban redevelopment now is the migration by young Americans, particularly the college-educated, out of the suburbs to city centers. From 2000 to 2010, for instance, the population of college-educated 25- to 34-year-old residents in downtowns grew 44%, three times as fast as the rest of the metro areas for the 50 largest cities, according to a pair of researchers from University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Pennsylvania.

2. Should HUD provide additional data on homeownership and rental housing, including maps and tables (e.g. data on percent of owner and renter occupied housing by area, maps showing patterns of home ownership and renter occupied housing together with demographics of race/ethnicity, and homeownership/rental rates by protected class group)?

www.affh.net comment:  Additional data on homeownership and rental housing will effectively serve as additional insider evidence for HUD and Public Housing Authorities to use for promoting additional rental units, however since HUD is strictly forbidden from setting local government priorities and goals, this additional insider data can be used against local governments to incentivize the expansion of rental properties.

3. Are there changes or improvements that can be made to the Opportunity Index measures? For example, should HUD include additional national data related to schools and education? Should HUD change the variables included in the Labor Market Engagement Index? Are there changes to the transportation indices (currently Transit Trips and Low Transportation Cots) that can be made to better inform a fair housing analysis of transportation access and whether transportation provides access to areas of opportunity? Should HUD adjust the Environmental Health Index with new variables and/or a revised formula?

www.affh.net comment:  Using additional national data is an encroach into all aspects of local government authority by the federal government that in addition to housing expands HUD’s central government reach into schools, education, and transportation, and the environment.  Why doesn’t HUD just create a set of indices, for example, an Opportunity Index, Labor Market Engagement Index, and an Environmental Health Index?  Oh, they already did!

4.  In addition to spelling mistakes herein, HUD omitted question number 4.
5. Should HUD add Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data to inform a fair housing analysis of lending practices and trends? Which types of HMDA data would be most useful (e.g., loan origination data, data on conventional loans compared to FHA loans, etc.)?

www.affh.net comment:   HUD already has full access to FHA disclosures for FHA loans that it provides, http://goo.gl/Ma5vpU and wants to mandate the same access to harvesting banks and credit union home loan data.  Additional HMDA data is an overreach into analyzing whether there is enough conventional loans available from banks, at the best terms, for who HUD considers the right kind of people?  Additional HMDA data provides too much central government insider information to expand its data mining opportunities.  

6. Should HUD distinguish between 9 percent and 4 percent tax credits in the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) data being provided, including in maps of development locations?

www.affh.net comment:  No, HUD should not distinguish between 9 percent and 4 percent tax credits.  There’s a competitive market for a limited number of 9 percent LIHTC tax credits that provides additional incentive for developers to get 10 years of tax credits on profits for low income high density properties that commit to a 30 year low income agreement.   This is more insider information to manipulate where the larger tax credits can be used to build low income high density, stack and pack housing thus allowing the government to remodel the landscape of our communities.

7. Should HUD make any other changes to the Local Government Assessment Tool to facilitate joint or regional collaboration or facilitate a meaningful fair housing analysis and priority and goal setting? 

www.affh.net comment:  Any changes HUD makes to facilitate regional collaboration means more centralize government planning and the reduction of local government authority.  No, HUD should not make any additional changes to AFFHT, regionalism is not related to the courts disparate impact decision.  The mere act of requesting additional authority for setting priorities and goal setting should provide all you need to know about HUD’s intent; the AFFHT tool and “meaningful fair housing analysis” spreading of regionalism is a central government sham.

ADDRESSES: Interested persons are invited to submit comments regarding this notice to the Regulations Division, Office of General Counsel, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 451 7th Street SW., Room 10276, Washington, DC 20410–0500. Communications must refer to the above docket number and title [Docket No. FR–5173–N–10]. There are two methods for submitting public comments. All submissions must refer to the above docket number and title. 1. Submission of Comments by Mail. Comments may be submitted by mail to the Regulations Division, Office of General Counsel, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 451 7th Street SW., Room 10276, Washington, DC 20410–0500. 2. Electronic Submission of Comments. Interested persons may submit comments electronically through the Federal eRulemaking Portal at www.regulations.gov. HUD strongly encourages commenters to submit comments electronically. Electronic submission of comments allows the commenter maximum time to prepare and submit a comment, ensures timely receipt by HUD, and enables HUD to make them immediately available to the public. Comments submitted electronically through the www.regulations.gov Web site can be viewed by other commenters and interested members of the public. Commenters should follow the instructions provided on that site to submit comments electronically.

The actual federal register publication is available if anyone else would like to wade through the details:

federal register publication for comments on 6 AFFH questions due 5-23