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HBAs Sign Up for VA Affirmative Marketing
Many home builders associations around the country have decided to adopt NAHB’s Voluntary Affirmative Marketing Agreement (VAMA) to provide their builder members with an easier way to meet requirements for having their housing qualify for financing from the Federal Housing Administration.
Multifamily builders and developers can file an Affirmative Fair Housing Market Plan (AFHMP) to comply with the FHA’s marketing requirements for minority populations, or they also have the option of using the VAMA, which was negotiated by NAHB as an off-the-shelf version of the AFHMP.
Builders can sign the VAMA directly with the Department of Housing and Urban Development — unless their HBA has chosen to participate in the VAMA; in that case, they must sign the agreement through the HBA. (For a previous story on VAMAs in Nation’s Building News, click here.)
If an HBA decides that it wants to participate in the VAMA, it needs to pass a resolution adopting the VAMA and submit the adoption resolution and the signature page to its HUD Fair Housing hub office. (For a sample signature page, click here —nahb.org/vama — and go to the last page in the HBA’s section on VAMA.)
When an HBA adopts the VAMA, it undertakes duties related to education, outreach and reporting. These are listed in detail in Part II of the VAMA and can also be found on NAHB.org in the section for HBAs.
The duties are extensive; while none of them should be considered optional, some of them may not apply to a particular HBA if they are not feasible.
The first obligation of the HBA is to create an Equal Opportunity Committee to manage the VAMA and other non-discrimination programs. This committee supervises all the activities under the VAMA.
Here are some of the other concrete steps that HBAs should take under the VAMA:
Education
- Inform the members of the availability of the VAMA. For a sample letter, click here.
- Conduct at least one educational seminar every year on the VAMA, Fair Housing laws and how to comply.
- Publish at least two articles a year in the association newsletter (if there is one) — a general article on Fair Housing in April and an article in the fall on compliance.
Outreach
- Contact local minority organizations in order to work together to further Fair Housing goals. For various materials that can be used to assist in community outreach, click here.
- Advertise the HBA’s commitment to Fair Housing through donated Public Service Announcements over the air and in newspaper ads four times a year.
- Distribute Fair Housing posters to all the firms that sign the VAMA. For a poster from HUD, click here.
- Encourage builders in protected classes (race, color, sex, national origin, family status and handicap) to join the HBA, and encourage construction employment for workers in these classes.
Records and Reporting
- Keep a list of members who have signed on to the VAMA.
- Receive annual reports from VAMA signatories that detail their affirmative marketing activities.
- Compile a summary of the signatories’ reports and submit it to HUD, along with a current list of signatories.
- Compile an annual summary of HBA efforts in affirmative marketing and submit it to HUD.
- For sample forms that HBAs can use to make annual reports to HUD, click here.
For more information, e-mail Andrew Holliday, NAHB federal regulatory counsel, or call him at 800-368-5242 x8305.
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