It's always interesting to see what makes news and what doesn't.
Five days ago on Saturday I did my first post HERE about HUD awards of Section 8 contract administration contracts for all states and I have done multiple updates since then confirming these awards and including estimates of project and unit counts by state.
To date I have seen zero additional coverage of this contract award and I confess it is a complete mystery of why these contract awards are not news:
- They cover more than 1 million units in private ownership.
- The two year contracts are likely worth close to half a BILLION dollars. (HUD had projected $289 million for contract administrators in FY 2012 budget submission).
- It seems likely that HUD will claim savings from these contracts AND translate that into additional families served or dollar savings.
- They make significant changes in where contracts are administered. NY, NJ, and MD contracts will be administered by a local housing authority in Ohio; Florida contracts will be administered in Georgia and Georgia contracts will be administered in Florida; and several states, including Oregon, will now have out of state contract administrators.
Originally created and posted by the Oregon Housing Blog.
Tom, I agree with your observation. For those intimately involved in HUD's MF portfolio, either as owners, agents, contactors, or affiliates, this is very big news. For everyone else - including the media - it's perhaps too complicated and obscure an issue to care about. If there was an angle for the media to play on this it would be HUD's objective to reduce costs in managing their portfolio of assisted housing. For the long term view, I'm interested in whether this "repositioning" achieves the desired effect, and at what cost to residents and other constituents.
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