When certifying and recertifying households, you may come across certain items that look like income, but that HUD doesn’t consider income. It’s important to recognize these items and not mistakenly count them in a household member’s annual income. Otherwise, you’ll...
HUD rules on energy assessment and conservation encourage managers to take steps to reduce their site’s energy and water usage and to engage and educate residents in making the site a greener, more sustainable place to live. Some energy assessment and conservation measures can require...
Since 2009, HUD has strongly encouraged public housing agencies to adopt smoke-free buildings to protect the health of residents, and recently HUD has urged owners of federally assisted multifamily properties to go smoke-free. And you may be considering banning smoking at your site—or in...
Despite some delays in implementation, a major piece of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act still requires all applicable employers, regardless of whether they offer health care coverage, to provide their current employees with a health insurance exchange notice no later than Oct. 1,...
While certifying and recertifying households, you may learn that a household member owns rental property that generates income. This doesn’t necessarily mean the household doesn’t qualify for an assisted unit. But you do need to know how to treat the property when calculating the...
From time to time, you may need to transfer a household to another unit at your site. For example, if a household has lost members, you may have to transfer it to a smaller unit because it’s no longer eligible to occupy the larger unit. Or you may be required by fair housing law to allow a...
On Aug. 6, HUD issued a notice intended to provide an overview of the recently enacted Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 (VAWA 2013). The 2013 law expands the number of HUD programs subject to the law’s protections beyond HUD’s public housing and Section 8 tenant-...
It’s likely that a number of the households you certify each year include full-time students who are 18 or older. Certifying these households isn’t complicated. But if you don’t know the specific rules on how to handle full-time students’ income, it’s easy to make...
Households that skip out without paying rent and don’t let you know where they’ve gone and whether they’re coming back can cause big headaches. When a unit is abandoned you have to deal with problems like frozen pipes and more serious health and safety hazards. And you need to...
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...
HUD’s “one-strike” rule sets out specific grounds for denying admission to applicants based on certain drug-related and other criminal activity. It requires you to add certain screening criteria to your resident selection plan and lets you add other optional criteria to screen...
