Today, HUD published new proposed regulations under its HOME Investment Partnership Program which are intended to strengthen the program and significantly improve performance and accountability at the local level.  Specifically, HUD’s proposed rule 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.

Read HUD’s new proposed HOME Rule.