Dealing with Households

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When certifying or recertifying household income, knowing how to count assets properly is an area that often throws site staff. It can be tricky, but understanding when to treat an item as income or an asset is essential—counting an item as an asset when it's not may lead you to falsely disqualify a household for being over-income, or you may inadvertently certify an ineligible household, jeopardizing your site's tax credits.

Two years ago, the Oklahoma Housing Finance Agency notified some 90,000 families associated with its Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program that their personal information might have been compromised when a laptop was stolen from an OHFA employee's home. The computer contained names, Social Security numbers, tax identification numbers, dates of birth, and home and business addresses of the clients who participate or have participated in the HCV program.

When new tax credit households move into your site, you can help them to start out on the right foot by ensuring that they have a clear understanding of their obligations for adhering to lease provisions and the house rules for your site. The orientation meeting sets the tone for the relationship that you will have with your residents.

Site owners and managers beware: This is the time of year when accidental carbon monoxide poisonings peak. Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless gas that's produced when fuel is incompletely burned. In the winter months, faulty furnaces and fuel-burning appliances, and snow-covered or blocked furnace vents, chimneys, flues, and air intakes are top contributors to carbon monoxide poisonings.

The world's population is aging at a rapid pace. The U.S. Census Bureau states that, in the next 10 years, people over 65 will outnumber children under 5 for the first time.

People are living longer, and they're living on their own. At least two million low-income seniors currently live in independent, federally subsidized rental properties across the country, according to the Institute for the Future of Aging (IFAS), the policy research arm of the America...

The slow economic recovery and high unemployment rates have created a surge in full-time enrollment among vocational schools and community colleges across the United States, according to research from the American Association of Community Colleges and the National Center for Education Statistics.

Drug-related and criminal activity has long been associated with low-income housing in the public mind. While drug dealing also takes place in conventional housing sites, most drug dealers and gangs target low-income developments to push their drugs to an already fragile population, say crime prevention specialists Chuck Desrosiers and Moses Saygbe. They point out that there are several factors that make certain housing sites more attractive to criminals:

If your tax credit site is located near a U.S. military base, your current residents or applicants may include military personnel and their families. Because of the unique nature of military service—and the likelihood of service members being deployed from their usual duty station for extended periods of time—both HUD and the IRS have addressed the special circumstances related to military households in the most recent revisions of the HUD Handbook and 8823 ...

Residents of multiunit housing sites can find that loving thy neighbor isn't always that easy. Every site owner or manager has had to deal with residents’ complaints about their neighbors at some point. Loud music, unruly kids, noisy pets, cooking odors—no matter what the issue, friction between households can quickly escalate into disruptive behavior if it is not dealt with directly.

“Don't let the bedbugs bite!” Most of us recognize that line from a popular nursery rhyme. It also may be a reason why many people used to believe that bedbugs were a myth. In fact, the public's resistance to believing that bedbugs are real has been one of the major hurdles in dealing with them, reports the National Pest Management Association (NPMA).