HUD Issues Final HOME Rule - July 23, 2013

HUD will publish its revised Final Rule for the HOME program in the Federal Register tomorrow, more than 19 months after it issued a draft revised rule for comment in December 2011.  A preview copy is available online.  According to HUD's summary (pages 8-10 of the preview copy), key changes to the 2012 draft rule include clarifying the definition of "commitment" of funds, allowing CHDOs to use consultants to demonstrate capacity but only for first year of their participation as a CHDO, allowing CHDOs to become owners of rental housing that they do not develop, revising the definition of homeownership to explicitly permit ground leases of 50 years or more for community land trusts, establishing a 2-month time frame for income documentation, eliminating the requirement for separate written standards for methods and materials in new construction projects, and eliminating the requirement for a minimum 15-year useful life of major systems (requiring establishment of system of replacement reserve contributions instead). The final rule also extends the timeframe for selling homebuyer units to 9 months. 

The National Low Income Housing Coalition has published a preliminary summary of the changes, with links to HUD summaries and to the Federal Register notice.