We’ll review the best practices for operating a housing site during a public health crisis.
Whether or not cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed in your area, you should review your site’s emergency response plans and update them accordingly as a precaution....
Residents or applicants may inform you that they need to have an aide live with them to help them with daily tasks. If a resident who is elderly or who has a disability asks you to allow her to have a live-in aide to accommodate her disability and to provide supportive services essential to her...
The minimum wage in more than 20 states and 26 cities and counties across America increased on Jan. 1, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP). This affects more than half of the country’s population and marks the greatest jurisdictional raise in U.S. history. Of the states...
The Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program is the federal government’s major program for helping very low-income families, the elderly, and the disabled afford decent, safe, and sanitary housing in the private market. Since housing assistance is provided on behalf of the family or...
To calculate the rent for your low-income units, you use HUD income limits. These are the same limits you use to determine whether households are qualified. The limits you use depend on the geographic location of your building and the percentage of area median gross income (AMGI) the owner and...
When certifying or recertifying households, you may encounter household members who get alimony or child support from ex-spouses or their children’s parents. Or it may be the case that a household member pays alimony or child support to someone else. Or a household member receives none or...
How you calculate the income of a low-income household member depends on whether that member is an “adult” or a “dependent,” as defined by HUD. But the difference between the two isn’t as obvious as you might think. The HUD Handbook specifically defines these terms...
The IRS requires your state or local housing credit agency to perform physical inspections of sites awarded LIHTCs. The agencies want to ensure the sites are in a safe, decent, sanitary condition and in good repair. Specifically, Section 42 of the IRS code requires state housing agencies to...
Taking over the management of a tax credit site in the middle of its compliance period can be tricky. That’s because the owner or former manager has important information you need to know to manage the site effectively, and you must ask the owner or former manager the right questions to...
To comply with tax credit rules, you must verify the student status of each household member who says he or she is a student. That’s because tax credit rules bar households composed entirely of full-time students. And if the student is a member of a household that’s not barred for...
Each year, if you manage a mixed-income site, you have the time-consuming job of recertifying tax credit households. But some households make the process more burdensome for you by failing to show up for a recertification meeting. If household members don’t report to a meeting until...
