SOURCE CAS Partners
Excerpt
BOSTON, July 30 /PRNewswire/ – CAS Financial Advisory Services (CAS FAS), the asset management group of CAS Partners, announced today that its capital planning subsidiary On-Site Insight (OSI) has started field inspections of the nation’s 1,300,000-home public housing portfolio. The findings from these inspections will give Congress and HUD a quantitative cost estimate of addressing public housing’s multi-billion-dollar capital backlog.
Together with the prime contractor, Abt Associates, which will be responsible for data integration and cost extrapolation, CAS FAS will assess the portfolio’s physical condition and quantify the total cost of addressing physical and functional obsolescence. Responding to a Congressional directive to the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to survey this vital housing resource, the study is HUD’s first large-scale assessment in more than a decade, and the first ever to look out 20 years.
“You shouldn’t make billion-dollar decisions in the dark,” said David A. Smith, CEO of CAS FAS. “But nobody knows with any precision how much it will cost to bring these properties up to an appropriate standard. We’ll deliver exact numbers policymakers can use to make accurate spending decisions.”
Over the next five months, CAS FAS will visit and inspect more than 550 properties operated by 140 separate housing authorities in 39 states and territories. Home to more than 4,000,000 Americans, the public housing inventory is roughly half a century old, varies widely in age, quality, maintenance record, and current physical condition. Observations will be compiled into a statistically meaningful projection of capital needs funding required.
“There really isn’t anyone else out there that could take on a multifamily job of this magnitude,” said Jed Lowry, CAS Financial Advisory Services’ director of capital planning. “This property capital needs analysis requires experienced people who are trained to a consistent high standard. We looked at this for HUD back in the mid-1980s, we know the physical infrastructure, and we’re experts in the legacy building systems. We’ll give HUD the best available property-level assessment.”
CAS FAS’s field team of more than 20 inspectors averages more than two decades’ experience each in capital planning for multifamily housing. “Not only do we bring knowledge, we provide a structured and detailed approach,” added Lowry. “A CAS FAS capital needs assessment encompasses more than 150 distinct building systems, and is regarded as the industry standard for thoroughness and accuracy. CAS Financial Advisory Services experience includes more than 6,000 such assessments over the past two decades.
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