HUD

The bill to avert a government shutdown moves to the Senate and lawmakers are hoping to pass it before the government shuts down Friday at midnight.

The Biden administration announces new emphasis on transit-oriented development.

The GAO said that the $10.5 billion from the FEMA Public Assistance program might cover only about half of the $20.3 billion identified in Puerto Rico’s Grid Modernization Plan as necessary to repair the grid and make it more resilient.

The money is for post-Maria reconstruction costs.

Only $14.9 billion has been disbursed out of the $48.35 billion allocated by Congress since Hurricane Maria.

The $10.2 billion is designated for long-term mitigation work to prevent a future recurrence of the damage and to make electrical grid improvements that will withstand future storms.

The federal government has been operating on a stopgap budget since the Oct. 1 start of the fiscal year but President Trump has declined to give any assurance he will agree to another one past Nov. 21.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said Thursday it is expanding the Rental Assistance Demonstration program to Section 202 PRAC units that house senior citizens.

CDBG mitigation is a new program to support communities for events that are likely to occur rather than recovery from events that have already occurred. Some disaster recovery funds have been used in the past for mitigation.

Moody’s Investor’s Service said the shutdown “has had minimal impact on municipal credits,’’ but warned that “economic disruption will grow as the shutdown lingers.”

Sergio Marxuach and other officials of the nonpartisan, San Juan-based Center for a New Economy said federal spending on disaster recovery has been slower than in other areas also struck by hurricanes in 2017.

Eleven states and five cities will also receive a share of the CDBG disaster grants, with the biggest amount of $4.7 billion going to Texas for the damage caused by Hurricane Harvey.

Some of the oomph for multifamily housing bonds comes from additional federal funding for public housing agencies which are partners in these bond deals while the remainder comes from programmatic changes in the law.

The bill has a $63 billion in spending for non-defense discretionary programs in the 2018 fiscal year ending Sept. 30, including $10 billion more for infrastructure programs.

Multifamily housing bond issuance more than doubled in 2016 to $14 billion.