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HUD generally requires you to get Social Security numbers (SSNs) for all members of an applicant household who are at least 6 years old. And HUD requires you to get proof of those numbers and specifies which documents you can accept as proof. But what if a household member was never issued an SSN? Or what if a household member can’t give you one of the specified documents?
Initially passed in 1994, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) created the first U.S. federal legislation acknowledging domestic violence and sexual assault as crimes, and provided federal resources to encourage community-coordinated responses to combating violence. VAWA was reauthorized by Congress in 2000, and again in December 2005. The latest 2012 renewal met with resistance, but 500 days after VAWA had expired, the House voted to reauthorize the bill and President...
As a manager, you have a fiduciary—that is, legal—responsibility to the property owner to ensure that tenant rent is accurately calculated and that residents are given appropriate notice of an increase in their portion of the rent, while simultaneously complying with the HUD regulations. Failure to provide proper notice of a rent increase in certain cases is a violation of the HUD requirements and can have a detrimental fina...
Federal laws require employers—including apartment building owners and management companies—to post signs explaining legal information to their employees. Failure to post the signs can cost as much as $10,000 per violation. Fortunately, compliance is easy. The signs are available free of charge from the government agencies that oversee the sign-posting laws.
Files on households can take up a lot of space. After a few years, you may be tempted to throw out some of these files, which contain documents relating to former and current households as well as to applicants who were rejected or withdrew their applications. If you're not careful, you might throw out documents that could help you thwart lawsuits or documents HUD needs to look over for management reviews and audits to ensure that you're complying with HUD rules...
Assisted sites can amass a lot of legal expenses for site-related matters like evicting problem residents or drafting letters to comply with certain HUD rules. You can charge site-related legal expenses to your site's operating accounts, but only if you comply with HUD's rules on handling these expenses.
In last month's issue of the Insider, we told you of HUD's efforts to clamp down on excessive pay at public housing authorities by setting caps that extend and expand limits imposed by Congress. With increased HUD attention on salaries, this may be a good time for owners and managers to go over HUD rules on calculating management fees. If you try to include income from sources that HUD says aren't allowed, you could get in trouble with HUD auditors fo...
Getting cost estimates before you hire contractors to do work at your site is not only a smart business practice, but it's also a HUD requirement. If you don't get those required estimates, you could run afoul of HUD or your contract administrator. And you put the site owner at risk of having to pay back any costs HUD or your contract administrator find to be excessive.
Like some sites, you might end up buying goods or services from an outside contractor or vendor that has close business ties to the site owner or managing agent. In these situations, the vendors or contractors are considered identity-of-interest (IOI) contractors.
HUD says that an identity-of-interest relationship exists between the site's staff and a vendor when the site's staff member, any officer, owner, or director of the vendor, or any person who dire...
Many Section 8 sites need to be refinanced, and their owners often include the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) program as part of the sites' new financial structure. But once an owner receives an allocation of tax credits for a Section 8 site, the site manager must approve only those applicants who qualify for both the HUD-regulated Section 8 program and the IRS-regulated LIHTC program.
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