Online Alerts

RSS

New York State's Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino will be required to support a bill prohibiting income discrimination in housing that he has fought for years or risk major fines for violating a court order, after a recent decision by a federal appeals court.

As housing providers and housing professionals, you place the utmost importance on providing residents with safe accommodations. One part of your site security strategy may be to use state and local criminal trespass laws to enhance security by issuing oral or written no-trespassing warnings for a specified amount of time to any nonresident who has no legal right to be on the site’s property, or who is not an invited guest of a resident.

Recently, federal inspectors launched an investigation into contracting practices at the San Francisco Housing Authority and are looking at all contracts and bids issued by the troubled agency during the tenure of its director, Henry Alvarez.            

According to a recently issued HUD report, poor financial oversight, failures to collect on rent, and inadequate internal and budgetary controls leave the Charlottesville Housing and Redevelopment Authority (CHRA) in Charlottesville, Va., vulnerable as federal money dwindles. The agency gave CHRA the local authority 30 days, or until the end of the month, to provide written responses to nine findings of serious violations of statute, regulations, or practice.    

In a letter dated March 8, Sen. Tom Coburn from Oklahoma wrote to Secretary Shaun Donovan to highlight responsible ways to cut spending in light of the sequester. The Oklahoma Republican emphasized cutting wasteful and fraudulent activities at HUD.

Community rooms can serve as an invaluable hub for programs and events for residents of your site. HUD encourages—and federal laws require—equitable access to and usage of your site's common areas and community room for all residents. Handbook 4350.3 (HUD Occupancy Handbook), Chapter 2, notes that under the Fair Housing Act, owners may not “treat anyone differently in determining eligibility or other requirements for admission, in use of the housing amenities, facilities or program, or in the terms and conditions of a lease.”

Recently, the former director of the Chelsea Housing Authority pleaded guilty to four federal counts of falsely reporting his salary. Michael McLaughlin was charged last month with knowingly concealing his salary in annual housing authority budgets from 2008 to 2011 and submitting them to state and federal housing regulators.

After reports surfaced in 2011 of excessive compensation at some PHAs across the country, Congress imposed a $155,500 salary cap for fiscal 2012 on the amount of federal funds that can be used to pay PHA executives. HUD has decided to extend that cap and close a legislative loophole so that total cash compensation, not just base salary, falls under it. “We will take executive action to put this cap in place in fiscal year 2013 under our own regulations if necessary,” the department said at the time.

HUD recently announced adoption of a long-delayed "disparate impact" rule. The new rule adopts a standard for HUD review of administrative complaints that has been adopted by every federal appellate court to rule on the issue over the past 30 years. According to the rule, a civil rights plaintiff is permitted to challenge a facially "neutral" policy or practice that has a clear discriminatory effect on a protected class of persons--like African Americans and other racial/ethnic minorities, or people with disabilities.