Section 8 Housing Assistance Payments Program; Fair Market Rent Schedules for Use in the Rental Certificate Program, Loan Management and Property Disposition Programs, Moderate Rehabilitation Single Room Occupancy Program and Rental Voucher Program

Section 8(c)(1) of the United States Housing Act of 1937 requires the Secretary to publish Fair Market Rents (FMRs) annually to be effective on October 1 of each year. FMRs are used for the Section 8 Rental Certificate program (part 882, subparts A and B), including space rentals by owners of manufactured homes under the Section 8 Rental Certificate program (part 882, subpart F) and project-based Certificate assistance (part 882, subpart G); the Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation program (part 882, subparts D and E); Section 8 housing assisted under part 886, subparts A and C (Section 8 Loan Management and Property Disposition programs); and to determine payment standard schedules in the Rental Voucher program (part 887). There have been several Federal Register publications leading to this final publication of the FY 1995 FMRs at the 40th percentile rent level. On June 23, 1994, HUD published separate sets of proposed FMRs at the 45th and the 40th percentile rent levels. The proposed 40th percentile FMRs were included in that publication to alert the public that the Administration was considering lowering the FMR standard as a cost saving measure. On July 13, the FMR comment period was extended to October 14 to give small PHAs in nonmetropolitan areas the opportunity to use HUD's recently issued rental housing survey guide. Because of the extended comment period, HUD could not review the comments in time to meet the October 1 deadline for publishing the final FMRs. On September 28, therefore, HUD published final 45th percentile FMRs for all areas at the proposed FMR levels and announced that there would be a later publication that would include revised FMRs for the areas whose rental housing surveys were still being evaluated. On March 2, 1995, HUD published the proposed rule to revise 24 CFR part 888 to change the FMR rent standard from the 45th to 40th percentile rent level. The comment period ended on April 3, 1995, and, in a separate Federal Register publication