PHADA Welcomes Member Feedback
On July 13, HUD’s Office of Policy Development & Research (PD&R) issued a request for comments regarding regulatory burdens. Titled, “Reducing Barriers to Public Assistance Programs,” the request poses five specific questions regarding the burden of form completion and documentation requirements for compliance placed on applicants, recipients, and administrators of HUD programs. This includes Public Housing Authorities, State and local governments, non-profit recipients of CDBG programs, Multifamily Housing owners, and FHA lenders.
While the stated purpose is to seek “comments from the public regarding the burden faced when applying for or maintaining eligibility for HUD’s housing programs,” the questions themselves and the discussion recognizes that the administrators of HUD programs will be most familiar with common obstacles faced by applicants and recipients. This includes specific references to compliance requirements, information and learning costs, inter-agency data sharing, and other obstacles impacting daily operations and interaction with participants.
The five questions, shortened for clarity are:
- Is there information currently being collected by HUD or HUD program administrators that have no apparent use or benefit or can be streamlined?
- Is there data collected that could be shared with other agencies, or other agencies that could share data, to reduce burdens? Who are the agencies and what information should be shared?
- Is there HUD data that is not currently aggregated and shared publicly and that should be?
- How can HUD use AI, machine learning, and/or data science tools to automate, augment, or otherwise streamline information collection and processing?
- Anything else you want to tell HUD about administrative burdens?
HUD has extended the comment period until September 14, just prior to PHADA’s Legislative Forum. Comments, suggestions, and ideas can be sent to PHADA at policy@phada.org using the subject line: Burdens.
The original request, with links to comment or browse posted comments, can be found here. An interesting Urban Institute virtual event on Modernizing Regulatory Review can be viewed here.