Compliance

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If you don’t, the IRS may cite you for noncompliance, and the owner may lose its tax credits.

After seven years of working towards consolidating, updating, and improving the Housing Quality Standards (HQS) and the Uniform Physical Condition Standards (UPCS) to implement a single inspection protocol for HUD-assisted units, HUD recently published the final rule for the Physical Inspection of Real Estate (NSPIRE) in the Federal Register. The rule proposes a new approach to defining and assessing housing quality and reduces regulatory burden. According to HUD, the publication of the final rule follows 16 listening sessions in 15 states with more than 3,330 attendees.

Unless the IRS states otherwise, as of Oct. 1, the inspection standards for monitoring will become NSPIRE.

The spring season’s warm weather and rainy days may motivate you to conduct a thorough spring cleaning of your office files. But before you clean out your file cabinets or declutter your computer files, it’s important to review the LIHTC program’s recordkeeping and retention rules first.

HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity recently published a fact sheet to educate housing providers and persons with disabilities who seek reasonable accommodations related to assistance animals. The fact sheet can be found at https://files.hudexchange.info/resources/documents/Assistance-Animals-and-Fair-Housing-Navigating-Reasonable-Accommodations-Fact-Sheet.pdf.

When complying with the tax credit law, you must follow different rules depending on which of the five types of tax credit units you’re dealing with. But tax credit managers often get confused about which rules apply to which type of unit, or even about how each unit type differs. If this happens to you, you may get tripped up in your compliance efforts. And dealing with different unit types incorrectly could put some or even all of the owner’s tax credits at risk.

In an announcement made in early October, the Biden administration announced key progress on implementing its Housing Supply Action Plan. The plan aims to create and preserve hundreds of thousands of affordable housing units in the next three years and help close the country’s critical housing supply shortfall within five years. It features a combination of legislative, regulatory, and administrative steps to expand affordable housing and encourage the construction and rehabilitation of housing of all types and price points.

Federal fair housing law bans owners and managers from discriminating against prospects and residents based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, and familial status. But most states and many municipalities have fair housing laws that ban owners and managers from discriminating against prospects and residents for other reasons. For example, Illinois bans discrimination based on age, marital status, ancestry, and military status or dishonorable discharge. And Chicago bans discrimination based on sexual orientation, parental status, and source of income.

Sexual harassment in housing is illegal, as is harassment based on race, color, religion, national origin, familial status, or disability. The Fair Housing Act prohibits harassment, retaliation, and other types of discrimination based on these protected characteristics.

Households may seek to transfer to different units at a site for various valid reasons. There may be a change in household composition. A household may seek a unit with additional bedrooms due to additional members joining the household. Or a member with a disability may seek a transfer because another unit better meets the needs of that individual. Also, the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) requires tax credit sites to have emergency transfer plans in place for victims of covered VAWA violence.