HUD Release of LIHTC Tenant Demographic Data: Not This Year or Anytime Soon that I Can See.

2008 Recovery Act legislation required state Housing Finance Agencies (HFA's) to submit LIHTC tenant demographic information to HUD (see statutory reference HERE).  The HFA submissions to HUD in the fall of 2011 was at least the second year the data was submitted to HUD.

After waiting for several months for state level summaries of tenant  demographic data from HUD, I asked HUD HQS staff this week via email and was advised that because of funding constraints HUD would NOT be doing any state level summaries of the LIHTC tenant data submitted by HFA's in the fall of 2011. (In my prior post HERE I linked project (not tenant) LIHTC data that HUD has recently updated with 2010 poverty data from ACS).

With HUD appropriations not likely better in FY 2013 than in FY 2012, it seem highly unlikely that HUD will produce summaries of LIHTC tenant demographics any time soon, rendering the statutory reporting requirement somewhat meaningless.  It also appears that HUD is out of statutory compliance with the requirement that : 

(c) Public availability: The Secretary shall, not less than annually, compile and make publicly available the information submitted to the Secretary...

With HUD's failure to post already collected LIHTC tenant demographic data, I expect the better local approach to find out who is served by LIHTC projects will be to refocus attention on getting OHCS to compile and publish state and LIHTC tenant demographic local summaries, since they are still required to submit data annually to HUD.  (My prior post on OHCS tenant data collection efforts is HERE).

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

First Ever Multiple Month/Year Voucher Excel Data for 2,300+ Housing Authorities, Including All Oregon PHA's.

I have prepared a single MS Excel workbook that contains multiple months/years of Voucher Management System data for 2,300+ US public housing authorities with vouchers. (It is possible that there may be a similar multi-year voucher public workbook out there someplace, but I am the proverbial "doubting Thomas" about that).

There are 86 data fields in the HUD VMS data, and I added two fields, a state field and a HUD region number field to make analysis by those fields easy to do. (For the 33 months included in the database that's more than 6.6 million pieces of voucher data, but whose counting?)

A HUD MS Word data dictionary HERE provides details about the values found in the VMS data fields. The IMPORTANT READ ME worksheet in the MS Excel Workbook has a complete list of these data fields in the column order in which they appear in the workbook.

The data includes monthly data for all months in CY 2009 and CY 2010. For CY 2011, data is only through September 2011, the last quarterly data currently available from HUD.

The workbook includes 

1. An Important READ me worksheet.
2. An Oregon voucher pivot table [The default view shows September 2009, 2010, and 2011 sum of vouchers under lease at the end of the month for each Oregon housing authority].
3. An Oregon voucher worksheet.
4. A US voucher pivot table [Default view shows September 2009, 2010, and 2011 sum of vouchers under lease BY STATE at the end of the month].
5. A US voucher data worksheet. 
6. A HUD Regional Lookup worksheet, used in a formula to fill in the HUD Region number in a field in the US voucher data worksheet.

This 42 MB MS Excel workbook is HERE and for easy future reference a link has been added in the right pane. Look for: 

 "Voucher VMS Data, US and Oregon: 2009,2010,2011". 

As a sample of the kinds of data found in the database, I have pasted below a pic with a count of vouchers, BY HUD REGIONS, under lease at the end of September 2009,2010, and 2011. 

Excel Downloading Tip-This workbook was created in Excel 2007/2010 format. Some users report they cannot direct view Excel files in this format from within their browser and/or that Excel files they save end up with a compressed .zip file extension.

My suggestion is to RIGHT CLICK and save the file to your PC. Then navigate to the file you downloaded and look at its file extension. IF it appears as .ZIP extension, change the .ZIP extension to an Excel 2007/2010 extension (.xlsx), and THEN open the file with Excel 2007/2010.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Tease of Data for 32,000+ HUD Housing Voucher Units in Oregon: Oregon Ranks #1 in West and #6 Nationwide in Percent of Vouchers that are Project Based.

I have starting to analyze HUD voucher data I have recently discovered that includes use and cost data on more than 2 million HUD voucher units under lease as of September 2010.

As a tease, below is a table that ranks the top 10 states by the percentage of leased vouchers used for project based assistance.  

Table shows that Oregon ranks #1 in states West of Mississippi and Oregon ranks #6 nationwide. Oregon's high rank is due almost entirely based on project basing from the Housing Authority of Portland who had 1,133 (98%) of the total 1,158 Oregon PHA project based voucher units.   

Note ALSO that Oregon had 32,141 vouchers under lease as of September 2010; I will look more closely at the distribution, use and cost of those vouchers in future posts.

State	Total Vouchers Leased	Project Based Vouchers	% Project Based Vouchers	State Rank
All States	2,078,353	37,572	1.8%
DC	10,866	1,443	13.3%	1
VT	5,811	751	12.9%	2
NH	9,140	479	5.2%	3
RI	8,506	357	4.2%	4
ME	12,040	492	4.1%	5
OR	32,141	1,158	3.6%	6
MA	72,268	2,413	3.3%	7
PR	28,059	933	3.3%	8
MN	29,728	985	3.3%	9
LA	42,988	1,334	3.1%	10

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Housing Data Page Now Has ACS 2005-2009 Tenure by Race and Hispanic Ethnicity , 400+ Geographies.

Check out the Select Housing Data tab at the top of the blog; it now includes an ACS 2005-2009 query with tenure by race and Hispanic ethnicity for more than 400 geographies, including the US, all states, all Oregon counties, all Oregon places, and all Oregon metropolitan and micropolitan areas. 

I have also added Oregon metropolitan and micropolitan areas to my previous query on rent burdens. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog. 

Blog Change: Adding Tabs at Top

I have added the first of what I expect may be several tabs to the top of the blog. The first tab, for "Select Housing Data" will be a page that will include links to some of the data I have used in blog posts. For each data set I will try to show the source, the geography and the format of the data. 

If you have any suggestions for additional tabs, please let me know. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

5 Year ACS Estimates Coming Next Tuesday Dec 14; For First Time Will Cover ALL Areas.

Will be interesting to see how useful data covering 5 years (Jan 2005-Dec 2009) is and (eventually) how it compares to 2010 Census data. ALL cities will be included for first time and some data will go all the way to the block group level.

Most of this 5 year data is supposed to be available through American Fact Finder with additional data available through downloads. Details about data and geographies available is HERE.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

MF GSE Loans in Oregon , CY 2008: 112 Projects, $744 Million.

As another "first ever", I have been able to construct a table showing multifamily loans acquired by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac in Oregon during CY 2008.  

Using some Excel formula magic, I was also able to add a place field, so the table I constructed HERE shows by county and city those Oregon GSE MF loans acquired during CY 2008. 

Unfortunately, to protect individual loan identity, the GSE MF database available does NOT have units by project, so totals are only available for the number of projects, and unpaid principle balance at acquisition. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Preview of HUD US Market Conditions 2nd Qtr 2010 Report Includes FHA SF Market Share Data.

Two reports are available. 

National data HERE opens to FHA SF market share information, showing that share of home purchase loans was up, refinance share down:

• FHA’s share of the 1- to 4-family mortgage market by loan count was 18.6 percent in the first quarter of 2010, down 1.1 percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2009 and down 3.6 percentage points from the first quarter of 2009.
• For home purchase loans.FHA’s market share by loan count was 32.7 percent in the first quarter of 2010, up 0.7 percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2009 and up 3.6 percentage points from the first quarter of 2009. 
• For mortgage refinance loans, FHA’s market share by loan count was 10.4 percent in the first quarter of 2010, down 1.9 percentage points from the fourth quarter of 2009 and down 8.5 percentage points from the first quarter of 2009.

Historical data is HERE. (Opens to FHA SF market share information)

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

FHFA Publishes Notice of New Order for GSE SF Public Use Database.

Today's Federal Register has a FHFA "Notice of Order" HERE that revises the required data elements for the GSE SF (and MF) public use databases. (My prior post about delay in release of these databases is HERE).

The revision incorporates statutory changes [Sections 1126/1127] made by the 2008 Housing and Economic Recovery Act. Those changes require publication of data for the proceeding year NLT September 30th of the following year and incorporation of HMDA compliant data elements.

Thanks to Will White, Senator Merkley's Senior Advisor, I was able to confirm that FHFA plans to publish the 2008 GSE public use SF database by the end of July , and publish the 2009 GSE SF public use database by the required Sept 30 statutory deadline. This schedule would mean that the publication of the 2008 data is 10 months after the deadline for statutory compliance.  Public release is expected to meet the deadline for 2009 and subsequent years. (FHFA's web page HERE will be updated once these databases become available to the public; let's hope that the format for these databases are user friendly)

The GSE SF public use loan level database is more robust that the HMDA SF database because it includes rural areas, AND a first time home buyer data indicator. Coupled with minority status data elements, this allows identification of loans to minority first time home buyers, which then allows the tracking of progress toward the goal of increasing minority home ownership rates.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

FHFA Incredibly Slow in Releasing GSE SF Loan Level Data for 2008 and 2009.

HMDA data for 2008 was released (PR HERE) by the FFEIC in September 2009, one of the slowest releases of that data for  years.

However, FHFA, the agency charged with regulating Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is making FFIEC look like speed demons. 

FHFA took over responsibility from HUD for releasing GSE SF loan level data for the GSE's for 2008 and later years. (Like HMDA, GSE loan level SF data is available down to the census tract level, AND includes not only minority household status but also first time home buyer status [which HMDA does not include].

As of July 2010, 19 months after the end of CY 2008, FHFA has still not released 2008 loan level GSE SF loan level data. 

Further, email correspondence with FHFA indicates that 2008 GSE loan level data may not be released until September at the earliest---21 months after the end of the calendar year AND around the time I would expect that 2009 HMDA data will be released by FFIEC (I.E., FHFA GSE data will be a year behind the already slow HMDA data).

Editorial comment: With loan volumes at reduced levels, and with public interest in GSE performance at high levels since the public now OWNS the GSE's, it is amazing to me that FHFA has not been held MORE accountable for the timely release of  GSE loan level SF data.(Such a lack of attention to timely release also does not bode well for the two NEW loan level databases that the housing finance reform bill would require; see my prior post HERE).

FHFA's web page for GSE loan level data for 2008 and later years is HERE; HUD's web page for ordering 2007 data is HERE.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Financial Reform Bill Requires TWO New Public Use Databases for Delinquency/Foreclosures AND HAMP Loan Modifications.

Finally! I have advocated for databases like this forever, I just hope that they are put into place quickly enough to make a difference. 

(I ALSO have a concern that the second database for loan modifications does NOT explicitly require release to the CT level [as does the first foreclosure and delinquency database], although the "individual record level" requirement would suggest that geographic data will be included). 

Buried within Title 14 of the Financial Reform bill is a requirement for a TWO NEW public access databases on 1.Foreclosures and Delinquencies and 2. HAMP Loan Modifications; I have pasted bill language for both below:

SEC. 1447. DEFAULT AND FORECLOSURE DATABASE.
6 (a) ESTABLISHMENT.—The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the Director of the Bureau, in consultation with the Federal agencies responsible for regulation of banking and financial institutions involved in residential mortgage lending and servicing, shall establish and maintain a database of information on foreclosures and defaults on mortgage loans for one- to four unit residential properties and shall make such information publicly available, subject to subsection (e).
(b) CENSUS TRACT DATA.—Information in the database may be collected, aggregated, and made available on a census tract basis.
(c) REQUIREMENTS.—Information collected and made available through the database shall include—
(1) the number and percentage of such mortgage loans that are delinquent by more than days;
(2) the number and percentage of such mortgage loans that are delinquent by more than 90 days;
(3) the number and percentage of such properties that are real estate-owned;
(4) number and percentage of such mortgage loans that are in the foreclosure process;
(5) the number and percentage of such mortgage loans that have an outstanding principal obligation amount that is greater than the value of the property for which the loan was made; and
(6) such other information as the Secretary ofousing and Urban Development and the Director of the Bureau consider appropriate.
(d) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section shall be construed to encourage discriminatory or unsound allocation of credit or lending policies or practices.
(e) PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY.—In establishing and maintaining the database described in subsection (a), the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development and the Director of the Bureau shall—
(1) be subject to the standards applicable to Federal agencies for the protection of the confidentiality of personally identifiable information and for data security and integrity;
(2) implement the necessary measures to conform to the standards for data integrity and security described in paragraph (1); and
3) collect and make available information under this section, in accordance with paragraphs (5) and (6) of section 1022(c) and the rules prescribed under such paragraphs, in order to protect privacy and confidentiality.

---------

SEC. 1483. PUBLIC AVAILABILITY OF INFORMATION OF
MAKING HOME AFFORDABLE PROGRAM.
(a) REVISIONS TO PROGRAM GUIDELINES.—The Secretary of the Treasury (in this section referred to as the‘‘Secretary’’) shall revise the guidelines for the Home Affordable Modification Program of the Making Home Affordable initiative of the Secretary of the Treasury, authorized under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (Public Law 110–343), to provide that the data being collected by the Secretary from each mortgage servicer and lender participating in the Program is made public in accordance with subsection (b).
(b) PUBLIC AVAILABILITY.—Data shall be made available according to the following guidelines:
(1) Not more than 14 days after each monthly deadline for submission of data by mortgage servicers and lenders participating in the Program, reports shall be made publicly available by means of a World Wide Web site of the Secretary, and by submitting a report to the Congress, that shall includes the following information:
(A) The number of requests for mortgage modifications under the Program that the servicer or lender has received.
(B) The number of requests for mortgage modifications under the Program that the servicer or lender has processed.
(C) The number of requests for mortgage modifications under the Program that the servicer or lender has approved.
(D) The number of requests for mortgage modifications under the Program that the servicer or lender has denied.
(2) Not more than 60 days after each monthly deadline for submission of data by mortgage servicers and lenders participating in the Program, the Secretary shall make data tables available to the public at the individual record level. The Secretary shall issue regulations prescribing—
(A) the procedures for disclosing such data to the public; and
(B) such deletions as the Secretary may determine to be appropriate to protect any privacy interest of any mortgage modification applicant, including the deletion or alteration of the applicant’s name and identification number.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

OMB/HUD Soliciting Comments on Expanded Project and Tenant Data Collection for LIHTC Properties; Find Proposed Forms Here.

On February 24th. HUD published a Notice of a planned expansion of the data to be collected and included in an expanded LIHTC tenant database, as required by the Reform Act.

Expanded data includes tenant income and rent paid information, AND race/ethnicity disabled status information.

HUD's publication in the Federal Register is HERE; any comments are to submitted as follows, by COB March 26,2010 :

Comments should refer to the proposal by name [Low Income Housing Tax Credit Tenant Database] and/or OMB approval Number (2528–0165) and should be sent to: HUD Desk Officer,Office of Management and Budget, New Executive Office Building, Washington, DC 20503; fax: 202–395–5806.

Following publication of the HUD Notice in the Federal Register I requested from HUD a copy of the proposed forms to be used to collect the data.

On a Sunday no less a HUD HQS staffer (Leroy McKinney Jr.) was good enough to send the proposed data collection forms to me. This was above and beyond the call of duty on a Sunday, so props to Leroy for doing so.

• The HUD proposed project level data collection form is HERE.
• The HUD proposed tenant level form data collection form is HERE.
• Note that instructions/definitions are on the back pages of each form.

Once data collection begins using the new forms, I anticipate this will result in an eventual expansion/update to the existing HUD LIHTC database HERE. (More HUD background on the existing LIHTC database is HERE).

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Metro Tuesday March 2 Work Session Item: Auditor Identified Problems with Follow Up on Functional Plan Reporting Changes.

The Tuesday March 2nd. Metro Council work session includes an agenda item to discuss a just (Feb 22nd.) released Metro Auditor's report on Metro's failure to follow up on changes in performance reporting for the Urban Growth functional plan, following a Metro suspension of performance reporting in November of 2007. (This included suspension of reporting of changes in the supply of affordable housing units).

The Auditor's report can be found HERE.

The last annual performance reporting from Metro on the Urban Growth Functional Plan was published in September 2005, reporting progress as of 2004; a Metro web site with that Urban Growth Report functional plan compliance reporting is HERE.

The Metro 2004 compliance report HERE notes that as of 2004:

"Compliance for Title 7 [The Affordable Housing Title'] was at 62% and only four local governments have met all of the Title 7 reporting requirements."

The Metro response to the poor rate of reporting was to adopt new reduced reporting requirements for local governments, including reporting of changes in the supply of affordable housing. HOWEVER, Metro failed to follow up on this reporting requirement and effectively stopped any reporting on changes in housing supply by suspending reporting in November of 2007 (for a planned two year period).

The Metro Council packet for the meeting is HERE; the meeting is scheduled to start at 1PM, with this agenda item scheduled for discussion at 1:15 PM.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

Metro Posts Comment Logs On Urban Growth and Other Plans.

Metro has now posted both summaries of public comments and comment logs/indexes for their various plans (Transportation, Urban Growth Plan, etc) at the web page HERE.

Comment logs/indexes for each plan appear as appendices. The comment log for the Urban Growth Plan/Report, for which I provided comments, can be found in Appendix III HERE.

I am pleased to see that, as I suggested, Metro has committed to changing the rent and housing prices at which partial subsidies are required. (see page 21 of Appendix III).

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

New Version: Draft Metro Rental Housing Sub Area Growth vs. Growth in Cost Burdened Renters.

Ever work on a project that seems destined to be your version of Moby Dick?

Well...it sure feels like that with my work on the table I have previously posted showing Metro's projected growth in households vs the growth in cost burdened households (from their Urban Growth Report/Plan).

In my most recent "corrected" post I said that the numbers represented ALL households, not just rental households. But, "Au contraire, the big white one", it turns out that numbers ARE indeed ONLY renter households. (I confirmed this with Metro).

SO for what is the third and HOPEFULLY last time I have:

1. Deleted my earlier post and posted a revised table, with corrected labels, HERE.
2. Continued to sort the table by low growth disparity in growth of cost burdened renters vs growth in all renters. (that's column 13, highlighted with a red border).
3. I added conditional formatting in each % column so that any % that is higher than the regional average shows up in yellow.

I am hoping to get exact counts of renter households by sub area from Metro so that I can remove the DRAFT label from this table. Right now I calculated renter households by sub area using the rounded %'s that were in a Metro table.

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.

New Subsidy Database Planned.

Sounds like a multiple year project with lots of organizations participating including PEW, OMB Watch, and Sunlight Foundation.

Details in press release here HERE; can sign up to receive email updates as project progresses.

American Community Survey Release Dates.

HERE is a link to a Census Bureau press release showing release dates for data from the annual American Community Survey.

Income and poverty data will be released in late August; housing data is scheduled for a late September release.

Harvard Joint Center 2008 State of the Nation's Housing Report Issued.

The 2008 version of this annual report from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, The State of the Nation's Housing (SONH 2008) should become available this morning after 8 AM.

I have to leave for meetings before that time, so look for the report (make sure you download the 2008, not 2007 report) from the Joint Center site HERE.

Debut: FHA Oregon Current Snapshot Report--Refinances Up 347%.

UPDATE: Correction to Refinance Totals, Addition of Sept/Oct 07 Columns
In looking closely at the refinance totals I realized that data was missing for Sept/Oct 2007 for refinances only. I have added those columns, so the total for refinances for last 12 months has increased to 2,755. I have changed text below accordingly from previous "more than 2,200" to "more than 2,700". All other data and comparisons stay the same and the linked PDF document has been changed. My apologies for the error.

Today is the debut of a new 2 page FHA monthly Oregon snapshot report that shows, for each of the most recent 12 months, the number of FHA loans endorsed by Oregon county. (Somewhat embarrassing self promotion--I believe that the Oregon Housing Blog is one of the few blogs, if not the only blog in the country, where you are able to find county level current FHA loan activity levels within a state).

• The first page of the PDF file is a count of all FHA loan types, except HECM loans.
• The second page is a count of only FHA refinance loans. Many, but not all of these refinance loans are refinances from conventional to FHA loans--also called FHA Secure loans according to HUD.

The current report covers April of 2007-March 2008. It shows that more than 4,900 total FHA loans were made during that period, with more than 2,700 of those loan being refinance loans. The most recent month total for refinances was 528, up from 118 in April of 2007--a 347% increase.

Permanent Links to the Most Recent Current Report

• I anticipate updating this report around the middle of each month, with the next update in June. You can always find the most recent 12 months information available with the permanent link HERE.
• That same link has also been added to the pane in the right of the blog--look for the link FHA Oregon Current Snapshot Report

Harvard Joint Center Publishes New Rental Housing Report.

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies released today a new report on rental housing titled, America’s Rental Housing: The Key to a Balanced National Policy .

A press release on the report is HERE.
You can download the full report HERE.