Dealing with Households

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During the summer months, you may notice an increase in drug activity at your site. Unemployed youth are out of school with more time to be idle. And if a significant percentage of your households consist of single parents who are working multiple jobs with kids being raised by themselves, your site may be more attractive to criminals.

Like most tax credit sites, you probably include some residency requirements in your leases and some in your site or community rules. But if you include a requirement in the wrong place, you could create confusion and face enforcement problems, liability, and loss of revenue, says Ohio attorney James Bownas. To help you avoid such problems, we’ll tell you which requirements generally belong in your leases and which generally belong in your site rules. And we’ll explain why you should consult your site’s attorney when trying to decide where a requirement belongs.

Unauthorized occupants can cause a host of problems at your community. Relatives or acquaintances of residents who move in without management’s knowledge are often the source of a site’s crime problems. Also, if an unauthorized occupant does something wrong at your community, such as damaging a unit, you’ll have a hard time holding him liable for his action since you have no lease agreement with him. In addition, unauthorized occupants can overtax your site’s systems, such as your hot water heater and available parking spaces.

When a new resident moves into a unit at your tax credit site, it’s important to make sure that he either turns on utilities, such as gas and electric, or, if the utilities were left on, transfers the account to his name. That’s because if new residents don’t transfer utilities into their names before move-in, you may get stuck paying for their utilities.

Depending on where your site is locations and the local climate, the summer months may be the optimal time to perform upgrades and renovations at your site, especially if outdoor works is involved. Contractors may be more willing to work during the summer, and there may be greater availability of less expensive labor. All this may mean you may be able to negotiate a better deal for your site.

As a site owner or manager, you must check the common areas of your tax credit site regularly for safety hazards. If you find problems, you must immediately correct them, or risk legal liability for any potential injuries to residents, their guests, or visitors to the site. You may encounter items such as bicycles, brooms, buckets, and large plants on fire escapes or other means of egress in an emergency. Items may block public hallways, stairwells, and other common areas with such items as old furniture or baby carriages.

Just about every time an apartment crime occurs, it seems the victim sues the owner for negligence. If a crime occurs at your site, the question of whether or not an owner has provided households with adequate security will be the crux of any legal analysis. If a court rules that you didn’t take reasonable and necessary steps to reduce the risk of crime at your site, you could end up with a very costly verdict and face increased insurance premiums.

One of the most common complaints among households is loud and disruptive neighbors. Unreasonable disturbances of other households with noise from loud music, fighting, and partying are common lease violations.

Even in the age of Facebook and other social media, many sites still feature bulletin boards in their lobbies or common areas. Since not every resident will be tech savvy or want to go online to check the latest site news, a bulletin board can be an effective way for a site to inform households about upcoming events and renovations, and other noteworthy information. A bulletin board can also be a good way for residents to share information or ask for help.

Residents frequently need you to let friends, relatives, or workers into their units when they aren’t home. But it’s risky to do that since you could inadvertently be letting a criminal into one of your residents’ units. If something happens to the resident or her property, you could be held responsible in a lawsuit. On the other hand, you don’t want to refuse access to a resident’s friend coming to apartment-sit, or to a housekeeper just trying to do her job.