The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It administers federal housing and urban development laws. It is headed by the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who reports directly to the President of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet.
The Civil Rights Act of 1968 is a landmark law in the United States signed into law by United States President Lyndon B. Johnson during the King assassination riots.
Section 8 of the Housing Act of 1937, often called Section 8, as repeatedly amended, authorizes the payment of rental housing assistance to private landlords on behalf of low-income households in the United States. Fort Lauderdale, Florida Housing Authority Director William H. Lindsey, upon the advice of Housing Authority attorney J. Richard Smith, initially developed 11(b) financing in the early 1970s to accommodate a local savings and loan interested in assisting with urban renewal projects Lindsey eventually brought to fruition. This was the initial impetus for the subsequent development of the now well known Section 8 Program. 68% of total rental assistance in the United States goes to seniors, children, and those with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development manages Section 8 programs.
The Community Planning and Development agency within the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) administers the grant programs that help communities plan and finance their growth and development, increase their capacity to govern, and provide shelter and services for homeless people. HUD is a national program, and HUD provides funding directly to larger cities and counties, and for smaller cities and counties, generally to state government. HUD's programs include the Community Development Block Grant Program and the HOME program.
Nehemiah Corporation of America is a non-profit organization based in Sacramento, California specializing in homeownership, affordable housing and community development. It started in 1994 as a small organization, but grew to prominence later in the 1990s after it developed a program that allowed home buyers to make down payments on their purchases using funds that were derived from the home sellers. This program, the Nehemiah Program, became popular and was widely emulated, giving birth to what came to be known as the seller-funded down-payment assistance industry. The industry attracted criticism from U.S. federal agencies and was ultimately shut down in 2008 by a change in federal law.
The Assistant Secretary for Housing, who also carries the title Federal Housing Commissioner, is a position within the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. The Assistant Secretary is responsible for overseeing the $400 billions Federal Housing Administration insurance portfolio. He or she also oversees the Department of Housing and Urban Development's regulatory responsibilities in the areas of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, the housing mission of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and the manufactured housing industry.
Brian Darrell Montgomery is an American government official who served as the United States Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2020 to 2021. Montgomery previously served as Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Housing and Federal Housing Commissioner from 2005 to 2009 and from 2018 to 2020. Montgomery is the only individual to serve as FHA Commissioner twice and under three U.S. Presidents.
Housing, or more generally, living spaces, refers to the construction and assigned usage of houses or buildings individually or collectively, for the purpose of shelter. Housing ensures that members of society have a place to live, whether it is a home or some other kind of dwelling, lodging or shelter. Many governments have one or more housing authorities, sometimes also called a housing ministry or housing department.
In the United States, subsidized housing is administered by federal, state and local agencies to provide subsidized rental assistance for low-income households. Public housing is priced much below the market rate, allowing people to live in more convenient locations rather than move away from the city in search of lower rents. In most federally-funded rental assistance programs, the tenants' monthly rent is set at 30% of their household income. Now increasingly provided in a variety of settings and formats, originally public housing in the U.S. consisted primarily of one or more concentrated blocks of low-rise and/or high-rise apartment buildings. These complexes are operated by state and local housing authorities which are authorized and funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 2020, there were 1 million public housing units.
The Native American Housing Assistance and Self-Determination Act of 1996 (NAHASDA) simplifies and reorganizes the system of providing housing assistance to federally recognized Native American tribes to help improve their housing and other infrastructure. It reduced the regulatory strictures that burdened tribes and essentially provided for block grants so that they could apply funds to building or renovating housing as they saw fit. This was in line with other federal programs that recognized the sovereignty of tribes and allowed them to manage the funds according to their own priorities. A new program division was established at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) that combined several previous programs into one block grant program committed to the goal of tribal housing. The legislation has been reauthorized and amended several times since its passage.
Shaun Lawrence Sarda Donovan is an American government official and housing specialist who served as United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 2009 to 2014, and Director of the US Office of Management and Budget from 2014 to 2017. Prior to that, he was the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development from 2004 to 2009 under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO) is an agency within the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development. FHEO is responsible for administering and enforcing federal fair housing laws and establishing policies that make sure all Americans have equal access to the housing of their choice.
Housing trust funds are established sources of funding for affordable housing construction and other related purposes created by governments in the United States (U.S.). Housing Trust Funds (HTF) began as a way of funding affordable housing in the late 1970s. Since then, elected government officials from all levels of government in the U.S. have established housing trust funds to support the construction, acquisition, and preservation of affordable housing and related services to meet the housing needs of low-income households. Ideally, HTFs are funded through dedicated revenues like real estate transfer taxes or document recording fees to ensure a steady stream of funding rather than being dependent on regular budget processes. As of 2016, 400 state, local and county trust funds existed across the U.S.
Discrimination in awarding Section 8 housing, also known as "source of income discrimination," describes cases of discrimination in the housing market of the United States of America whereby landlords refuse to rent to tenants using housing vouchers. In the United States, "Section 8" is a portion of the Housing Act of 1937 that provides financial assistance for housing costs of several million low-income Americans.
Non-profit housing developers build affordable housing for individuals under-served by the private market. The non-profit housing sector is composed of community development corporations (CDC) and national and regional non-profit housing organizations whose mission is to provide for the needy, the elderly, working households, and others that the private housing market does not adequately serve. Of the total 4.6 million units in the social housing sector, non-profit developers have produced approximately 1.547 million units, or roughly one-third of the total stock. Since non-profit developers seldom have the financial resources or access to capital that for-profit entities do, they often use multiple layers of financing, usually from a variety of sources for both development and operation of these affordable housing units.
The Homes for Heroes Act of 2013 is a bill that was introduced into the United States House of Representatives in the 113th United States Congress on January 23, 2013. The bill would create a Special Assistant for Veterans Affairs in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with responsibilities related to making sure United States military veterans get fair access to housing and homeless assistant programs.
Moving to Work (MTW) is a demonstration program for public housing authorities (PHAs) that provides them the opportunity to design and test innovative, locally designed strategies that use Federal dollars more efficiently, help residents find employment and become self-sufficient, and increase housing choices for low-income families. MTW gives PHAs exemptions from many existing public housing and voucher rules and more flexibility with how they use their Federal funds. PHAs can use special funding formulas for MTW agencies and permit agencies to shift funds between the programs or to other uses.
The Rental Assistance Demonstration is a federal housing program that was enacted as part of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012, and is administered by the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD). Broadly, the purpose of the Rental Assistance Demonstration is to provide a set of tools to address the unmet capital needs of deeply affordable, federally assisted rental housing properties in order to maintain both the viability of the properties and their long-term affordability. It also simplifies the administrative oversight of the properties by the federal government. Specifically, RAD authorizes the conversion of a property's federal funding from one form to another, where the initial form presents structural impediments to private capital investment and the new form is not only familiar to lenders and investors but, since its enactment in 1974, has leveraged billions in private investment for the development and rehabilitation of deeply affordable rental housing.
Housing and Community Development Act of 1992 was first introduced to the 102nd Congress on June 5, 1992, and was signed and made law by President George H. W. Bush on October 28, 1992. Also known as "The 1992 Act", the bill amended a number of housing, banking, and drug abuse laws. It amended The United States Housing Act of 1937. It increased aggregate budget authority for low-income housing for fiscal year 1993 and 1994. It also extends ceiling rents, excludes certain child care expenses, and excessive travel expenses from the calculation of adjusted income and apply to Indian public housing certain definitions of the Cranston-Gonzales National Affordable Housing Act; It allows the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development to issue public and Section 8 housing tenant preference rules. The Act also extends certain exemptions from waiting list requirements and eligibility restrictions with respect to income eligibility for assisted housing and while revising the family self-sufficiency program, with respect to escrow saving accounts, incentives for participation, and action plans.
J. Michael Dorsey is a retired American attorney and administrator. He served as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) from 1987–1989, Administrative Counsel of the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer of the U.S. House of Representatives (CAO) from 1995–2003, and Chief of Administrative Services of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2003–2004. He was briefly Acting Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in 1989 during the transition from the Reagan to the Bush administrations.
