HUD’s one-size-fits-all regulatory approach often inhibits PHAs from effectively tailoring federal programs to local community needs. PHAs have been successful when they are able to tailor their policies according their agency’s individual local goals, housing market conditions, and community priorities. This flexibility provides housing authorities the necessary tools to best serve their low-income residents. HUD should allow housing authorities to focus on innovation, championing local decision-making and local flexibility. Rigid adherence to narrow program rules and unnecessary oversight prevents the responsiveness and adaptability needed to use resources in the most effective way possible.
In June 2017 public comments submitted jointly with counsel Reno & Cavanaugh, PLLC in response to HUD's notice, "Reducing Regulatory Burden; Enforcing the Regulatory Reform Agenda under Executive Order 13777," CLPHA asserted that HUD should focus its limited resources more carefully and reconsider its approach to regulation by providing increased local control and focusing on outcomes rather than technical compliance. This would to ensure more effective affordable rental housing programs that are better able serve low-income people in the communities that they live in. "At a time when public-private partnerships are increasingly important, this changed approach would also allow PHAs greater options for working with private partners to access private funds and to better serve the needs of the local community," they wrote.
