Remarks by:
Carl W. Wagner
Director
Multifamily Housing Processing Division
Rural Housing Service, USDA
Washington, D.C.
Addressing CARH:
Sections 515 and 538, Training — and PR
I want to touch on a couple of things about Section 515 and 538 and then
touch on our policy meeting.
One of the things about 515 and 538 is that I think we’re getting there
as far as the leveraging and partnering. It is interesting to me that in 515,
for every $1 of 515 funds, we have $1.77 coming from some other source. In
538, for every $1 we put out, we have $1.73 coming from some other source.
That speaks volumes to the fact that you beat the bushes in putting these
packages together and finding other sources. I know we give you points for
that, but that is really a big thing at this time — finding the leveraging
partners and getting them involved and making the deals.
On 538, we had more requests than we have dollars for. We do have some
dollars from 1997 that we think we can get our hands on. I want you to
remember about NOFA responses: What has to happen is those selected have to turn in applications and be processed to be ready for Obligation. Obligation is what counts. Until
then, everything is OK, maybe, possibly, whatever. Obligation is the key
thing, and it is first come, first served. If you get a 538 NOFA response, get
that done, get the application in, get it ready to be obligated as fast as
possible. We’re going to be pushing our staff, pushing you, and pushing
lenders to be as fast as possible. I do not want to be in the position of not
using all the money.
Training For Staff
I’m going to give you a clue about our recent training in San Diego.
We’ll have three tracks. When we put a track in policy training, that means a
lot — that means we’ll spend three whole days. We take the people and put
one person in one track, the second in another, and the third in the third
track. We’re spending three full days on the tracks: Servicing, which
includes prepayment; 515 new construction/rehab; and 538. The reason is to
make the field staff aware of the fact that we’re committed to making the
programs work, and committed to giving the kinds of tools they need.
We’ll also be talking about some things you should be aware of. For one
thing, the Agency is doing a great job; the Agency is out there helping the
poorest families, the families with the most need. If you’ve seen some of the
statistics, it is the families that average about $8,300 in income. No other
program has ever been able to do that. None. The program has been out there
for 30 years, successfully. That’s a long time for any program. No other
program has ever done that. There are a lot of positive things about what’s
going on in 515 that we need to be out there talking about.
Good Program — But No PR
Second, the job’s not done. If you’ve seen some of the statistics, there
are still a million households that are in substandard housing, rent
overburdened, overcrowded, and so on. We really haven’t gotten the job done in
Rural America.
Next, there’s something I call the holistic approach, which is using all
the programs to meet all the needs in the community. So many times, we get
folks that say they know a program won’t work in a community because . . . fill
in the blank. I don’t buy that. I think there are people in every community
who can use our programs, from the person making 115% of median income down
to the person whose only income is Social Security. We need to use all
those programs; we need to be making all those programs work; we need to be
making all those communities aware of our programs, including the Community
Facilities programs. We’ll be talking about what I call the holistic approach.
More PR Needed
Last, they have to be telling our story, have to get out there and talk about
what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, how effectively we’re doing it. Do a
little PR, more PR, much more PR.
I saw an e-mail the other day that scared me to death. This came from an
OMB person who represents a program to another OMB person, to our person who
represents our program. The question was: “Why do Vouchers not work in rural
areas? My understanding is that everyone is moving out of rural areas,
therefore there ought to be a lot of empty housing Vouchers would work in.” Talk
about a lack of information! And it actually went through two OMB Officers. We
have to make it clear that Rural America is growing. It actually went up 4
million people in the last Census. I think that whole issue of telling the
story and the fact that there is still an unmet need out there is a really
big issue for us.
Thank you.
A Further Discussion of 3560 and Handbook
Obie Baker: 3560 is the umbrella of all multi-family regulations. You won’t
see a 1930-C because anything related to multi-family will fall under 3560
with sections addressing the specific areas. In the future, you will be
talking 3560. We’re dropping all the peripheral series and numbers and
consolidating all the regulations to make them shorter and more compact.
Easier said than done.
Administrative Notices are separate and apart. ANs are there to clarify what’s within the
regulations. If there’s an AN out there that you don’t like, perhaps one
that addresses an issue, it’s likely to remain intact until it expires. Then
you take a look at it, and if the situation warrants it, we extend it or
renew it.
ANs are different from regulations. A regulation is a regulation and an
Administrative Notice is an Administrative Notice. They are basically used as
vehicles to further clarify, iterate or reiterate a provision within the
regulation. Now we will have a Handbook when the 3560 regulation is
published. It’s going to be much easier for us to make policy and
administrative changes using the Handbook than we are able to do so now with
the main body of the regulation. Most of the
policy in the main body of the regulation will be predicated on statute; your Handbook will sort out
policy based on administrative. Whenever we put it in effect, and if we need
to change our policy, we won’t have to go through all this prolonged
clearance process: we’ll just change the Handbook.
Pat Sheridan: Administrative Notices are specifically a clarification of an
existing regulation. It can’t change it. The guidance is still good, unless
we come out with something revoking it. You may not find something on the
Web, which is a bit of a problem which we have, too, in that we can’t see
anything that’s over a year old on there; I’ll have to go digging through
our old files. There can be ANs that are over a year old that we are still
using as guidance. We do attempt to renew every AN every year or so so that there is a current one that is on the Web.
As Obie mentioned, the handbooks are going to be key. Getting back
to how long the ANs are going to be good for — they’re going to be there
until the new regulations and handbooks are issued. We’ll have to keep doing
ANs. But once we have the new regulations and handbooks in place, hopefully
we won’t have to do ANs any more because we will be able to do sheet changes
in the Handbook to implement what would have done in an AN previously.
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