One of the most common complaints among households is loud and disruptive neighbors. Unreasonable disturbances of other households with noise from loud music, fighting, and partying are common lease violations.
In most cases, you need to verify household income with third-party employers because household members usually earn their income through jobs. But you may encounter a household member who works for herself. In this situation, you must follow the HUD Handbook’s requirements for verifying self-employment income. HUD’s preferred method of verifying self-employment income is getting a copy of the household member’s federal tax return, including supporting schedules [Handbook 4350.3, App. 3].
When you verify a household’s income with employers or other verification sources, you may get information that contradicts what household members told you during the household’s certification or annual recertification. For instance, a household member may tell you that he gets $50 per month in disability payments. But when you verify those payments with the government, you may learn that the member actually gets $65 per month.
Even in the age of Facebook and other social media, many sites still feature bulletin boards in their lobbies or common areas. Since not every resident will be tech savvy or want to go online to check the latest site news, a bulletin board can be an effective way for a site to inform households about upcoming events and renovations, and other noteworthy information. A bulletin board can also be a good way for residents to share information or ask for help.
Residents’ maintenance needs can vary greatly, from changing a hard-to-reach light bulb to fixing an overflowing toilet that’s flooding a bathroom. Some of your residents’ maintenance requests, while important, may not be emergencies. But other residents’ requests may need an immediate response to protect your residents’ health and safety and your property.
Meeting your site’s minimum set-aside is the most important goal you have as a tax credit manager. If you meet the set-aside, the owner of your site will be entitled to claim its tax credits. If you don’t meet the set-aside, your site won’t qualify for the tax credit program, which means the owner won’t be able to claim any of the credits it was allocated.
Residents frequently need you to let friends, relatives, or workers into their units when they aren’t home. But it’s risky to do that since you could inadvertently be letting a criminal into one of your residents’ units. If something happens to the resident or her property, you could be held responsible in a lawsuit. On the other hand, you don’t want to refuse access to a resident’s friend coming to apartment-sit, or to a housekeeper just trying to do her job.
Your residents are entitled to a utility allowance if they are responsible for payment for their gas, electric, water, sewer, or trash service. A unit is out of compliance if you are not crediting the resident with a utility allowance, and the amount you charge them for rent exceeds the tenant rent calculated when subtracting the correct utility allowance from the maximum allowable rent.
If you already manage tax credit sites, you may be asked to help manage the conversion of an existing site to tax credit housing. If so, there are two key challenges you’re likely to face. First, you’ve got to certify the income and eligibility of existing residents to make sure they’ll qualify once the site becomes tax credit housing. Second, you’ll need to ensure that any site rehabilitation work goes smoothly. Many conversions involve significant physical rehabilitation, which may occur while residents continue to occupy the site.
Sites generate a lot of records, such as leasing records, maintenance records, security deposit records, incident reports, and so on. Because these records take up space in leasing or management offices, most staff members want to get rid of them as soon as possible. But these records can help you if you ever need to defend yourself in a lawsuit. They can also help you to bring a lawsuit against someone—for example, a resident who leaves owing you money.
