The U.S. Department of Housing and Community Development (HUD) provided $2.4 million to help public housing agencies supply permanent housing and case management for homeless veterans. The funding comes from HUD's Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (HUD-VASH) program and will support 435 housing vouchers in 18 communities. The program includes both rental assistance through the vouchers and comprehensive case management provided by Veterans Affairs Medical Center staff. In the same announcement, HUD released its latest estimate on homelessness in the United States, which showed that veteran homelessness has fallen by nearly 12 percent since January 2010. A list of funding recipients and more details are available at www.hud.gov.

HUD proposed a data collection to identify public housing agencies (PHAs) for participation in a national study of administrative fees associated with the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program. Through site visits to as many as 30 PHAs, staff interviews, and reviews of client data and administrative data, HUD plans to identify a sample of PHAs that are operating high-performing and efficient HCV programs. The broader, national study of administrative fees will include 50 PHAs, some of which HUD has already identified. HUD said it will use the results of the national study to estimate administrative fees and develop a new administrative fee allocation formula for the HCV program. See the December 23 Federal Register notice for more details.

Westside Residences II, a 196-unit affordable housing development for homeless veterans in Los Angeles, Calif., opened in December. The property includes 50 project-based HUD-VASH units from the Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles and 48 single-room-occupancy units. Residents will have access to rehabilitation, job training, counseling and educational services through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and U.S. VETS. Among the officials who attended the ribbon cutting ceremony were U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters and Judge Harry Pregerson, U.S. Court of Appeals Ninth District.

HUD awarded $3.6 million in Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grants to 13 communities. The funds will enable grant recipients to build the capacity needed to create a comprehensive transformation plan for revitalizing distressed public or assisted housing within a struggling community. HUD selected the grantees from a pool of 71 submissions for fiscal year (FY) 2011 Choice Neighborhood Planning Grants. Congress recently appropriated $120 million for the program in FY 2012. A list of funding recipients and project summaries are available at www.hud.gov.

The Council for Affordable and Rural Housing (CARH) released the results of a survey it conducted last fall regarding the House Financial Services Committee's legislative proposal to transfer the Rural Housing Service (RHS) to a new office at HUD. The survey, which CARH distributed to its members, also addressed efforts to align overlapping requirements of federal rental housing programs. Responses showed that CARH members were split on the RHS proposal. Approximately 45 percent of the respondents believed that the RHS programs would benefit from the move. Most respondents expressed mixed feelings about a transfer, an indication of the issue's complexity, CARH said. Roughly half of the respondents were interested in serving on CARH's subcommittee tasked to address the issue. More details and a copy of the survey responses are available at www.carh.org.

The Senate Banking Committee in December approved the nominations of Maurice Jones and Carol Galante as HUD deputy secretary and assistant secretary-Federal Housing Administration commissioner, respectively. The nominations will be put before the full Senate for a vote.

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