Refinement of Income and Rent Determination Requirements in Public and Assisted Housing Programs: Implementation of the Enterprise Income Verification System-Amendments

On January 27, 2009, HUD issued a final rule that revised the regulations for its public and assisted housing programs to require the use of the Enterprise Income Verification system by public housing agencies and multifamily housing owners and management agents when verifying the employment and income of program participants. Consistent with Administration policy to review rules issued during the transition from one Administration to another, HUD re-opened the January 27, 2009, final rule for public comment, and delayed the effective date of the regulatory amendments to January 31, 2010. The public comments received in response to solicitation of comments on the January 27, 2009, final rule highlighted certain regulatory provisions requiring further clarification and others extraneous to the purpose of the rule, which was full implementation of the Enterprise Income Verification (EIV) system. On October 15, 2009, HUD published a proposed rule soliciting public comment on proposed revisions to the January 27, 2009, final rule that would clarify certain provisions of the January 27, 2009, final rule and return other regulatory provisions to their pre-January 2009, final rule content. This final rule follows publication of the October 15, 2009, proposed rule, and takes into consideration the public comments received on the proposed rule. After careful consideration of the issues raised by the commenters, HUD has decided to make three minor technical changes to the October 15, 2009, proposed rule to clarify the scope of the provision governing termination of assistance, and the scope of the Social Security number (SSN) disclosure requirements applicable to new household members under the age of 6 and current participants 62 years of age or older.