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Every manager’s worst nightmare is a violent crime against a resident at his assisted housing site. And compounding the tragedy of the crime is the risk of liability. You could be held liable for the crime if you knew your residents were at risk of that type of crime. In legal terms, the crime would be “foreseeable,” and if you failed to take reasonable steps to prevent it from happening, you would be liable.

HUD recently suspended the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. This rule was a 2015 regulation that required any community receiving HUD development block-grant funding to routinely identify instances of racial segregation and provide solutions to counter them. It was intended to fulfill an unmet mandate of the Fair Housing Act, which forbids racial discrimination in housing and also requires local governments to work to desegregate their communities. According ...

EIV, which stands for Enterprise Income Verification, is HUD’s web-based tool to help reduce erroneous and improper payments in the agency’s assisted housing programs. The ultimate goal, HUD says, is to ensure that the “right benefits go to the right person.” Using EIV and the data it provides is part of HUD’s initiatives under the Rental Housing Integrity Improvement Project (RHIIP).

Correctly determining the size of each household at your site is essential because the income limits you must use to check household eligibility are organized by household size. Although determining a household’s size sounds straightforward, it’s not as simple as counting the number of people who occupy a unit.

By Carolyn Zezima

In late 2016, HUD issued a final rule requiring public housing agencies (PHAs) to implement a smoke-free policy. The rule requires each public housing agency to implement a smoke-free policy banning the use of prohibited tobacco products in all restricted areas by Aug. 3, 2018. According to the rule, restricted areas include all public housing living units; indoor common areas in public housing; public housing agency administrative office buildings; and all outdoor area...

Last year, the United States tallied a record high bill of $306 billion in weather-related disasters, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The total amount includes damage from three of the five most expensive hurricanes in U.S. history: Hurricane Harvey cost $125 billion, second only to 2005’s Katrina; while Maria cost $90 billion, ranking third, according to the NOAA. Irma was $50 billion, for the fifth most expensive hurrican...

Sometimes a household will disappear for weeks at a time. Signs may indicate the household may not come back. No one answers the household’s phone, their mail piles up, and their assigned parking space remains empty. When a unit is left unattended, health and safety hazards such as rotting food or frozen pipes can result. Plus, HUD frowns on wasted assistance if an assisted unit isn’t occupied. But often, when you think households are gone for good, they com...

HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing recently issued Notice PIH 2017-23, clarifying HUD’s interpretation of the statutory amendment related to flat rents.

When a household member leaves, you need to take into consideration possible changes to the household's subsidy and the possibility of having to move the household to another appropriately sized apartment. For example, after a member moves out, the household could still be getting allowances that reduce its rent, but those allowances are attributable to the member who departed. Or after a household member moves out, the unit the family occupies may now be too big fo...