2010 Annual Adjustment Factors Now Available

Annual rent adjustments are required for housing units receiving assistance under Section 8 of the U.S. Housing Act of 1937. HUD develops the rent adjustment factors — known as Annual Adjustment Factors, or AAFs — based on changes in residential rent and utility costs derived from Consumer Price Index survey data. The Contract Rent AAFs for 2010 were published in the Federal Register on February 10, 2010 and are available electronically from HUD USER.

Contract Rent AAFs are used to adjust contract rents for units assisted in certain Section 8 housing assistance payment programs during the initial (i.e., pre-renewal) term of the housing assistance program (HAP) contract and for all units in the Project-Based Certificate program. There are three categories of Section 8 programs that use the Contract Rent AAFs:

There are separate rent adjustment procedures for the three program categories. The Contract Rent AAFs are shown in two tables and each table has two columns: one for adjusting the rent of units where the highest-cost utility is included in the contract rent, and the other for units where the tenant pays for the highest-cost utility. The Contract Rent AAFs in Table 2 are 0.01 less than in Table 1, and no Contract Rent AAF in Table 1 or Table 2 can be below 1.0.

For 2010, HUD also published Renewal Funding AAFs, but these are not applied to contract rents, they are applied to Public Housing Agency (PHA) leasing and cost data and to deter PHA renewal funding.