Dealing with Households

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Your site employees are in a perfect position to keep you up-to-date on what’s going on at your site. And the information they give you about residents can be critical in helping you run your site. They can alert you to lease violations and unauthorized residents, and they can help you build cases against troublesome residents.

The Treasury Department recently released updated Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) spending data through Aug. 31. So far, state and local programs have made over 1.4 million Emergency Rental Assistance payments to households and distributed $7.7 billion since January.

On Aug. 3, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a limited eviction moratorium covering renters living in communities experiencing a substantial or high level of COVID-19 transmission. And on Aug. 26, the Supreme Court rejected the moratorium in a challenge brought by a coalition of landlords and real estate groups.

On July 21, the White House hosted a virtual meeting to help cities quickly deliver emergency rental assistance and develop plans to prevent evictions. Since December, Congress has provided to Treasury $46 billion for the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program.

A site’s community room is an ideal place for residents to throw parties or hold resident meetings. But your site may have closed its community room during the pandemic to limit social interactions and abide by local health guidelines. In fact, these type of safety precautions were common. During the course of the pandemic, the IRS issued notices stating that closing an amenity or common area during the period of April 2020 through September 2021 in response to CO...

The U.S. Department of the Treasury recently announced that it has distributed $6.1 billion through the Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) program in less than two weeks since the $21.6 billion was allocated to the program through funding provided by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. The program is intended to prevent evictions and ensure basic housing security for Americans affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This second iteration of the ERA program was created on Ma...

High-speed Internet at home has become essential for school, work, and many other areas of life during the pandemic. Some of your households may be struggling to afford an Internet connection. In an April Pew Research survey of American parents with children attending school remotely, 36 percent of low-income respondents said it was somewhat likely their children wouldn’t be able to finish schoolwork because they lacked an Internet connection at home.

With the aging of the U.S. population, you may find that the average age of your residents and applicants seeking units is older. Helping residents to age in place safely is a win-win for both owners and residents. Residents typically want to live independently for as long as possible, and stable occupancy reduces management costs.

Residents may ask employees to do personal tasks such drop off their dry cleaning or fix a stereo or some other personal equipment. This puts owners in a delicate position because, on one hand, allowing such employee behavior opens you up to liability risks, and on the other hand, barring employees from running errands for residents may send the wrong message—that your staff isn’t as helpful as it might be.

By signing a lease agreement, a resident agrees to follow the terms of the lease. If the tenant breaks a clause of this contract, an owner must often first send the tenant a “Notice to Quit.” A Notice to Quit is a formal legal document an owner sends a resident in an attempt to fix a lease violation after a tenant disregards prior notices and warnings. This document informs residents that they have “X” number of days to fix the violation or the o...