[Federal Register Volume 89, Number 120 (Friday, June 21, 2024)]
[Notices]
[Pages 52074-52076]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2024-13582]


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DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT

[Docket No. FR-7080-N-28]


30-Day Notice of Proposed Information Collection: Public Housing 
Agency (PHA) 5-Year and Annual Plan, OMB Control No.: 2577-0226

AGENCY: Office of Policy Development and Research, Chief Data Officer, 
HUD.

ACTION: Notice.

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SUMMARY: HUD is seeking approval from the Office of Management and 
Budget (OMB) for the information collection described below. In 
accordance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, HUD is requesting comment 
from all interested parties on the proposed collection of information. 
The purpose of this notice is to allow for 30 days of public comment.

DATES: Comments Due Date: July 22, 2024.

ADDRESSES: Interested persons are invited to submit comments regarding 
this proposal.
    Written comments and recommendations for the proposed information 
collection can be sent within 30 days of publication of this notice to 
www.reginfo.gov/public/do/PRAMain. Find this particular information 
collection by selecting ``Currently under 30-day Review--Open for 
Public Comments'' or by using the search function. Interested persons 
are also invited to submit comments regarding this proposal by name 
and/or OMB Control Number and should be sent to: Colette Pollard, 
Reports Management Officer, REE, Department of Housing and Urban 
Development, 451 7th Street SW, Room 8210, Washington, DC 20410-5000; 
telephone (202) 402-3400 (this is not a toll-free number) or email: 
[email protected].

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Colette Pollard, Reports Management 
Officer, REE, Department of Housing and Urban Development, 7th Street 
SW, Room 8210, Washington, DC 20410; email Colette Pollard at 
[email protected] or telephone (202) 402-3400. This is not a 
toll-free number. HUD welcomes and is prepared to receive calls from 
individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing, as well as individuals 
with speech or communication disabilities. To learn more about how to 
make an accessible telephone call, please visit https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/telecommunications-relay-service-trs.
    Copies of available documents submitted to OMB may be obtained from 
Ms. Pollard.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: This notice informs the public that HUD is 
seeking approval from OMB for the information collection described in 
Section A.
    The Federal Register notice that solicited public comment on the 
information collection for a period of 60 days was published on 
December 14, 2023 at 88 FR 86667.

A. Overview of Information Collection

    Title of Proposal: Public Housing Agency (PHA) 5-Year and Annual 
Plan.
    OMB Control Number: 2577-0226.
    Type of Request: Reinstatement, with change, of previously approved 
collection for which approval has expired.
    Form Number(s): HUD-50075-5Y, HUD-50075-HCV, HUD-50075-HP, HUD-
50075-MTW, HUD-50075-SM, HUD-50075-ST, HUD-50077-CR, HUD-50077-CRT-SM, 
HUD-50077-ST-HCV-HP and HUD-50077-SL.
    Description of the need for the information and proposed use: The 
Public Housing Agency (PHA) Plan was created by section 5A of the 
United States Housing Act of 1937 (42 U.S.C. 1437c-1). There are two 
different PHA Plans: The Five-Year Plan and the Annual Plan. The Five-
Year Plan describes the agency's mission, long-range goals, and 
objectives for achieving its mission over a five-year period. The 
Annual PHA Plan is a comprehensive guide to PHA policies, programs, 
operations, and strategies for meeting local housing needs and goals. 
This revision addresses necessary updates to all the forms and the 
automation of all the PHA Plan forms including the Moving to Work (MTW) 
Supplement for PHAs that joined the MTW Demonstration under the 2016 
Appropriations Act (i.e., MTW Expansion).
    PHA Plans are needed to inform the Department of Housing and Urban 
Development (HUD), residents, and the public of the PHA's mission and 
strategy for serving the needs of low income, very low-income, and 
extremely low-income families in the PHA's jurisdiction. This 
information helps provide accountability to the local community for how 
PHAs spend their funding and implement their policies. The PHA Plan 
submission also includes various certifications to confirm that PHAs 
will abide by all federal civil rights laws and that the PHA Plan is 
consistent with the applicable Consolidated Plan.
    PHA plans also allow HUD to monitor the performance of programs and 
the performance of the public housing agencies that administer them. 
Since 2000, HUD has taken several steps to reduce the administrative 
burden of the PHA Plan submission including the use of streamlined plan 
submissions for certain PHA based on size and performance. For example, 
the Housing and Economic Reform Act (HERA) removed the requirement for 
qualified PHAs to submit an annual PHA Plan and to only submit the 5-
year Plan. A ``qualified PHA'' is one that manages 550 or fewer public 
housing units and vouchers and is not labeled as a troubled public 
housing agency. Currently, qualified PHA's must only submit an annual 
certification to confirm that they are abiding by all federal civil 
rights laws.
    In January 2021 HUD requested from OMB that the PHA Plan collection 
be reinstated with change. These changes included the addition of a new 
section to accommodate the anticipated fair housing planning 
requirements of the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) 
Rule and the introduction of the MTW Supplement. OMB approved the 
changes, reinstated the collections and HUD made the new templates 
available to PHAs on the HUD website as individual word processing 
files. After publication, HUD made subsequent minor changes to the 
forms and certifications to remove unnecessary sections, make minor 
edits and to account for updated or eliminated regulatory citations. 
Additionally, HUD took steps to automate the MTW supplement in the 
Housing Information Portal (HIP).
    With this current proposed information collection, HUD intends to 
automate all PHA Plan templates and certifications. While the templates 
will be automated, the content and required elements will be mostly the 
same with

[[Page 52075]]

a few modifications as needed to account for recent changes in 
regulations. Modifications to the collection include the following:
    (1) HUD is adding an additional element to the HUD-50075-HCV form. 
The revised HUD-50075-HCV form will include an additional element 
requiring Section 8 only PHAs to report on their Project Based Voucher 
(PBV) activities. This template will be used by HCV-only PHA's that 
administer the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program which may also 
include PBV developments.
    (2) HUD is adding an optional feature for PHA's to attach their 
written Admission and Continued Occupancy Policy (ACOP) or 
Administrative Plan documents to their Five-Year Plan and Annual Plan 
submissions. This will create a centralized database of all local PHA 
policies which currently can only be found at each individual PHA or on 
their websites.
    (3) Section D of the PHA Plan Templates, meant to address the fair 
housing goals as was originally required by the 2015 Affirmatively 
Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, has been removed. This is due to 
the 2020 Preserving Neighborhood and Community Choice (PNCC) rule 
rescinding the 2015 AFFH rule which eliminated the requirement for HUD 
grantees to conduct fair housing planning. On June 10, 2021, HUD 
published an AFFH interim final rule (IFR) which does not restore the 
2015 AFFH rule for HUD grantees to conduct fair housing planning only 
that grantees meaningfully certify that they are meeting the Fair 
Housing Act's AFFH obligation. The language in the HUD certifications 
have been updated to reflect this change.
    (4) Additional edits have been made to the PHA Plan templates as 
required by the Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act of 2016 
(HOTMA)--Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) and Project-Based Voucher (PBV) 
Implementation final rule. These edits include the addition of Section 
B.5 HUD Form 50075-5Y for PHAs to report PBV activities as required by 
24 CFR 903.6(c). The HOTMA-HCV rule also required citation updates to 
account for the redesignation of paragraph (r) of 24 CFR 903.7 as 
paragraph (s).
    (5) Lastly, HUD will now strongly encourage complete electronic 
submission from all PHAs. Currently, PHA Plan templates are downloaded, 
edited, and submitted as email attachments which must then be 
individually uploaded, analyzed, and organized by HUD. Automating the 
PHA Plan forms will make the PHA Plan review process more efficient by 
streamlining the submission and review process thus reducing the 
administrative burden on both HUD and PHAs. HUD estimates that 
automating the PHA Plan form will reduce both the PHA and HUD 
administrative burden by approximately 25%. Electronic submission and 
collection of this information will also make future data and policy 
analysis feasible.
    Overall, the burden hours associated with the collection is 
expected to decrease by 2,024 hours due to the automation of the PHA 
Plan templates. Additional time may be required in the first year to 
train PHAs on the system, however, because the Public Housing Portal is 
an existing HUD system that PHAs use and are familiar with, this burden 
is expected to reduce in subsequent years. Accordingly, the additional 
burden of the one-time training is not expected to exceed the time 
savings created by the system.
    Finally, revisions were made to this collection to reflect 
adjustments in calculations based on the total number of current, 
active PHAs to date. Since the last approved information collection, 
the number of active public housing agencies has changed from 
approximately 3,780 to 3,763. The number of PHAs can fluctuate due to 
many factors, including but not limited to performance scoring, the 
merging of two or more PHAs or the termination of the public housing 
and/or voucher programs due to the Rental Assistance Demonstration 
(RAD).
    Members of affected public: Public Housing Agencies, Developers.

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                                       Number of     Frequency  of  Responses  per    Burden hour                           Hourly cost
      Information  collection         respondents      response          annum       per response   Annual  burden hours  per response *    Annual cost
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Form HUD-50075-ST [dagger]........             796               1             796            5.64  4,489.44............          $26.62     $119.508.89
Form HUD-50075-SM [dagger]........             202               1             202            2.67  539.74..............           26.62       14,367.99
Form HUD-50075-HP [dagger]........             152               1             152            5.26  799.52..............           26.62       21,283.22
Form HUD-50075-HCV [dagger].......             246               1             246            4.52  1,111.92............           26.62       29,599.31
Form HUD-50075-MTW [dagger].......             100               1             100            6.50  650.................           26.62       17,303.00
Form HUD-50077-CR (Qualified PHAs)           2,321               1           2,321            0.16  371.36..............           26.62        9,885.60
Form HUD-50075-5Y [dagger]........           3,763               1         3,763/5   1.23 (6.15/5)  4,628.49 (23,142.45/           26.62      123,210.40
                                                                                                     5).
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    Total.........................           3,763               1           3,763           25.98  12,590.47...........           26.62         335,158
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* The hourly cost for response assumes a GS-9, Step 5 ($55,564), Executive Assistant, hourly rate is $26.62.
[dagger] Note: The rows representing the burden for each template/respondent type includes the burden of the relevant annual certification forms (HUD-
  50077-SL, HUD-50077-CR-SM & HUD-50077-ST-HCV-HP).

B. Solicitation of Public Comment

    This notice is soliciting comments from members of the public and 
affected parties concerning the collection of information described in 
Section A on the following:
    (1) Whether the proposed collection of information is necessary for 
the proper
    performance of the functions of the agency, including whether the 
information will have
    practical utility;
    (2) The accuracy of the agency's estimate of the burden of the 
proposed collection of information;
    (3) Ways to enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the 
information to be collected; and
    (4) Ways to minimize the burden of the collection of information on 
those

[[Page 52076]]

who are to respond; including through the use of appropriate automated 
collection techniques or the forms of information technology, e.g., 
permitting electronic submission of responses.
    (5) ways to minimize the burden of the collection of information on 
those who are to respond, including the use of automated collection 
techniques or other forms of information technology.
    HUD encourages interested parties to submit comment in response to 
these questions.

C. Authority

    Section 3507 of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, 44 U.S.C. 
chapter 35.

Colette Pollard,
Department Reports Management Officer, Office of Policy Development and 
Research, Chief Data Officer.
[FR Doc. 2024-13582 Filed 6-20-24; 8:45 am]
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