NMA's Ray Adair participates in HUD's administrative fee study

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has archived a public briefing on the results of its long-awaited study on administrative fees in the housing choice voucher (HCV) program. The 90-minute presentation was broadcast on April 17. The program is now available on HUD’s webcast archives page and here, on the HUD channel at YouTube.

In a press release on April 8, HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R) provided this introduction to the study:

PHAs can only help low-income families with housing choice vouchers if they can pay the costs of administering the program. Since the beginning of the program in the mid-1970s, the formula for allocating administrative fees has largely relied on differences in fair market rents (FMRs) for determining administrative fee allocations, based on the weak theory that FMRs correlate with wage rates and other costs of operation, like office rent.

The lack of actual data on how much it costs to run a high-performing and efficient voucher program has undermined HUD’s efforts to ensure adequate levels of funding throughout the nation.

Through a very detailed and methodical approach, this study captured all costs incurred (labor, non-labor, direct, indirect, overhead costs) at a broad sample of 60 PHAs operating high-performing and efficient HCV programs across the country between 2012 and 2014. The study proposes a new administrative fee formula, which is based on cost drivers that cover the actual costs to administer the HCV program and has implications for the overall budget and for individual PHAs.

NMA vice president of finance Ray Adair is credited on page 4 of the report for his participation in the study as a member of the expert and industry technical group. You can read an executive summary of the report here and view an accompanying slide presentation here. The full report is here.