In today's Federal Register, HUD published a notice on its information collection activities related to the Capital Needs Assessment of Public Housing (CNA). This study was conceived to provide an updated assessment of public housing capital needs. CLPHA advocated for and secured $1.5 million in the FY20 appropriations bill to fund the CNA study.
The purpose of the notice is to inform the public that HUD is seeking approval from OMB to collect information for the CNA study, and once this approval is received, HUD and its contractor will begin the data collection process. This notice gives PHAs a high-level overview of the data collection process.
In the first tranche of data collection, 300 PHAs will be asked to complete a web-based survey that will ask for capital needs estimates, their practices to arrive at those estimates, and how they’re using those estimates. Later, the second tranche of 500 PHAs will be asked to provide CNA data on a web-based survey similar to the first survey. HUD and its contractor will use the data collected, along with other data sources, to estimate the capital needs of public housing.
PHAs have until November 7 to comment on the data collection process itself. CLPHA will be submitting a comment letter on this notice after seeking input from members and the Place-based Committee. CLPHA will keep you posted as the CNA data collection process moves forward.