Remarks by:
Eileen Fitzgerald
Acting Associate Administrator
Rural Housing Service, USDA
Washington, D.C.
In preparation for helping our field staff implement the Reform provisions and trying to get our new construction money out as soon as possible, we decided to have three regional training meetings so we could have more staff come so the Reforms could be implemented more effectively out in the field.
In conjunction with that, we thought it would be very valuable to us to have a listening forum about preservation and prepayment. These are truly challenging issues. We are going through a major regulation Reinvention, which was postponed slightly because of the Reforms, but we have done a Comprehensive Servicing Strategy (which we worked on with a number of Stakeholders on the Management issues last year) which we will incorporate into the re-write of the multi-family regulations. In thinking of both this regulation on preservation and prepayment and of policy issues which continue to come up in Congress, we thought that we really feel like we need to get a clearer, more consistent policy; hopefully, come up with some innovative ideas on how to deal with the prepayment and preservation issue.
We know there is a lot of frustration out there. The budget is very limited; our dollars are very limited; some of the solutions that were there before just aren't going to be there. And, the problem is going to continue to grow as the projects get older.
Our interest is always going to be, first and foremost, to the tenants.
The reason we have this program is to provide low income housing. But, we want to do that in a customer-friendly way:
the tenants are our customer;
our borrowers are our customer; and,
our property managers are our customer.
But, fundamentally, the program exists to provide low income housing across rural America, and we have to treat prepayment and preservation in a way that we protect that interest and we make sure that we're keeping low income housing out there. Again, if we had an unlimited bank account, I think that would be easier to do.
Solutions Out There?
One of the things we want to talk about today is what innovative and unique solutions might be out there — which involves money, but particularly if they don't involve financing or involve less financing, that would enable us to keep the stock out there. There is not enough decent, affordable rental housing in rural America. And, we certainly don't want to lose what we have. We all need to work together to try to keep that out there.
This is truly a listening forum. We have the Statute and policy we are working under now. We’re not coming in here with preconceived notions. We really want to hear from you about how it’s working out there, what are the problems, what are the suggestions. We’re here just to listen and to take that information back to come up with some new ways.