No Go on Simons

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is scrambling to find another candidate to run its fledging multifamily restructuring program, now that HUD's first choice, Larry Simons, has run into problems at the White House.President Clinton was expected to nominate the former federal housing commissioner to be the first director of HUD's Office of Multifamily Housing Assistance Restructuring. However, conflict-of-interest problems due to Mr. Simons's investments in HUD-assisted multifamily properties, first reported by Housing Affairs Letter, has killed the nomination. HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo is now in a bind, because he has to get President Clinton to nominate an OMHAR director by Oct. 27 or else the whole mortgage restructuring effort to save billions of dollars of federal rent subsidies must be suspended. "HUD has a problem," one congressional source said. Meanwhile, interim rules governing the multifamily mortgage restructuring process are expected to be published in the Federal Register next week.