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Dealing with reasonable accommodations may be trickier than you think. Last year the Department of Justice (DOJ) and HUD jointly issued new guidance on reasonable modifications under the Fair Housing Act. Since then, HUD has issued new statements on the housing rights of disabled applicants and residents.
In late January 2009, HUD issued a final rule refining the income and rent determination requirements in its public and assisted housing programs. The final rule has two major new requirements for PHAs and multifamily housing program owners and managers:
It requires the use of the Enterprise Income Verification (EIV) system for verifying income sources maintained in the EIV system at all recertifications or reexaminations; and
It requires verification of the Social Security numbers of all applicants, current program participants, and new household members.
When you're dealing with households whose rent is subsidized through the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program, formerly known as the Section 8 Tenant-Based Assistance Program, it is important to remember that it is not the same as the Project-Based Section 8 program you are familiar with.
In late 2008, housing groups and industry professionals met with former HUD Secretary James Preston to urge greater transparency about HUD activities. High on their agenda was discussing how HUD has discarded previous, more formal methods of notifying the public about new policies and regulations. Instead, HUD has been relying increasingly on electronic methods, including emails to the field, to communicate policy changes.
On Sept. 18, 2008, HUD clarified its position on the use of the new model lease, after generating a storm of controversy by requiring that all leases contain an Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approval number and expiration date, which is currently 2011.
HUD announced that owners and managers of Section 8 sites may remove the OMB approval number and expiration date from HUD model leases. Consequently, HUD eliminated the problem that had raised an outcry—namely, that substitution of the new model lease would require all residents to sign reissued leases.
As a site owner or manager, you may have come across residents who receive annuities. If so, you must ask how the annuity should be treated—that is, as income or as an asset, or whether to exclude it entirely based on which it is, says affordable housing consultant Elizabeth Moreland, an expert in HUD rules.
According to HUD Occupancy Handbook 4350 REV-1, CHG 2, issued in 2007, annuities must be treated either as income or an asset, but never as both [Chap. 5, §5-7, par. G(2)]. Here are three rules to remember:
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