HUD Releases Final AFFH Assessment Tool
On March 23, 2016, HUD published a Notice in the Federal Register regarding the final Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Assessment tool. This tool is for Public Housing Agencies. HUD had already released assessment tools for use by local governments and States and Insular Areas. This Notice solicits public comment for a period of 60 days on the proposed tool. The comment due date is May 23, 2016.
On July 16, 2015, HUD published the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) final rule that provides HUD program participants with a new process for planning for fair housing outcomes in order to assist them in meeting their statutory obligation to affirmatively further fair housing. This process includes an assessment tool that program participants must use to evaluate fair housing choice and access to housing opportunities in their jurisdictions.
The Proposed PHA Assessment Tool
The purpose of the tool is to provide certain nationally uniform data to program participants that will be useful in completing an Affirmative Fair Housing Plan (AFH). All program participants must use the HUD-provided data when completing an AFH.
HUD is only able to provide data for those protected class groups for which nationally uniform data are available. For this reason, some questions in the PHA Assessment Tool focus on specific protected classes based on the availability of such data. For these questions, local data and knowledge may be more helpful than the HUD assisted data.
Local Data & Local Knowledge
In addition to the nationally uniform data provided by HUD, program participants are required to use local data and local knowledge to assist in their assessments. Such local information will be necessary when answering the questions in the assessment tool.
Structure of the Proposed PHA Assessment Tool
The proposed PHA Assessment Tool has three key objectives:
(1) The assessment tool must ask questions that are sufficient to enable program participants to perform a meaningful assessment of key fair housing issues; (2) the assessment tool must clearly convey the analysis of fair housing issues and contributing factors that program participants must undertake; and (3) the tool must be designed so program participants can use it to prepare an AFH that HUD will accept without unnecessary burden.
The tool has six sections:
- Section I: Cover sheet and certification. This section also covers basic program information applicable to the program participant or participants;
- Section II: Executive Summary;
- Section III: Addresses the community participation process and directs the PHA to describe outreach activities to encourage community participation in the development and review of the AFH, to describe how successful its outreach efforts were in obtaining community participation related to the AFH, and to summarize all comments obtained in the community participation process;
- Section IV: Assessment of Past Goals and Actions – requires PHAs to reflect upon the progress of past goals and actions and the efforts undertaken to achieve fair housing goals;
- Section V: Fair Housing Analysis – this section is designed to assist PHAs in identifying the fair housing issues and contributing factors in their service area and region; and
- Section VI: Fair Housing Goals & Priorities – this section contains a summary table of the fair housing issues that the PHA has identified.
The PHA Assessment Tool may be used by PHAs, including Qualified PHAs that elect to submit either an individual AFH or a collaborative AFH involving a collaboration of more than one PHA.
PHAs should carefully review the content of the proposed tool and send comments to HUD by the deadline date noted above.