LeadingAge New York HUD Advocacy
On Dec. 12th, LeadingAge Housing Cabinet members Jill McLellan Phelps, Douglas Reicher, Donald Manning, and LeadingAge NY staff Ken Harris met with HUD New York City staff that included:
- Teresa Bainton, New York State Multifamily director;
- Diane Lima, director for project management;
- Margaret Wingate, supervisory project manager; and
- Eugene Walton, project manager
The following items were discussed:
LeadingAge Housing Professionals Conference
The annual conference will be held March 26-28, 2014 in Syracuse, New York.
New York State HUD Multifamily Reorganization
LeadingAge inquired about the plans for upstate HUD oversight that is currently being administered through the Buffalo regional office. HUD’s plan is to have multifamily property work processed through the New York City office, yet some of the individual property “workflow” may be completed at a variety of locations. There will be five “phases” of a national consolidation of Multifamily offices with New York slated as phase four (4). Assuming the necessary Copngressional allocation of funding and no other impediments or litigation, New York would begin the reorganization in late 2015. Updated news on the Multifamily Transformation can be followed on the HUD Multifamily Transformation website.
Project-Based Contract Administration (PBCA) Contract Update
There should be a decision by the end of 2013 on the contract awards of the PBCAs. Once management and occupancy reviews (MORs) begin, they will be prioritized based on the previous score. Properties that scored high may take a few years to be reviewed. Also, HUD will conduct property reviews based on low-scoring Online Property Integrated Information Suite (OPIIS) reviews conducted under the Real Estate Assessment Center that uses a combination of REAC, FASS and PASS scores to analyze a property’s performance
LeadingAge “Renovations & Building Features” Workgroup
LeadingAge has convened through the Housing and Retirement Housing Cabinets an initiative to explore best practices in renovations with a focus on filling vacancies and ensuring "marketability" of projects in design and renovations. We will keep HUD informed of the progress and will include their design team into the research.
New York State Senior Supportive Housing
The request for proposals for the $3 million in the NYS budget for "supportive senior housing" may be coming out soon.
Disaster Planning
Teresa Bainton discussed a Dec. 11th training in New York City that reviewed lessons learned from super-storm Sandy. LeadingAge mentioned the difficulty of receiving federal Sandy funds, despite the fact that those funds had been allocated. Bainton suggested further trainings especially for upstate properties on disaster preparedness.
Contact: Ken Harris, kharris@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8835