Remarks by:Charles Wehrwein
Deputy Administrator — Multi-Family Housing
Rural Housing Service, USDA
Washington, D.C.
We’re here to listen today. We’re not going to float any policy issues. We’re not going to commit to any approaches at this point. But, we will listen very hard to comments. We’ll take your comments back, and in the process of Reinventing all of the Multi-Family regulations, we’ll see what we can do from a regulatory standpoint. If there are some issues that require legislative relief, we’ll look very hard at making proposals to the Hill that would include legislative relief.
Our Reforms are in their absolute last clearance stage at OMB. Just about concurrently with publication in the Federal Register, there will be a National NOFA (Notification of Fund Availability) for New Construction funds which will call your attention to the States to look at those places that are designated for assistance. Those States that have designated AD-622’s in those designated places will not be requesting new Applications — they will fund those existing applications for the next two years.
Following publication in the Federal Register as an Interim Final Rule, we will have a 60 day comment period. We will have a hearing in probably mid- to late- in that process; right now, that would look to be June 1 to June 15. We haven’t settled on the site yet. I encourage you to comment in the comment period. We are going to ask the State to hold all AD-622’s until after the comment period. We’ll see where everything shakes out at that point.