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Offering a retirement account plan, such as a 401(k) plan, for your frontline on-site staff is a good way to attract and keep quality employees. And HUD lets you charge your contributions to these plans, as well as related administrative costs, to your site’s operating account.

Your site’s Section 8 Housing Assistance Payments (HAP) contract may be administered by a contract administrator other than your HUD field office. In these cases, where HUD isn’t the contract administrator, the HUD field office is responsible for monitoring the contract administrator to measure its performance and compliance [HUD Handbook 4350.5, par. 1-1]. For instance, a state housing agency such as a local housing authority or a state finance agency may administer your contract.

This year, HUD and the courts have brought much attention to possible Fair Housing Act violations from criminal screening policies. In April, HUD issued guidelines that spell out how HUD will evaluate fair housing complaints in cases where a site rejects an applicant based on criminal history.

When certifying or recertifying households, you must list both the household’s income and its assets. However, deciding whether to treat an item as income or an asset can be tricky. If you treat an item incorrectly, you will make a certification mistake that could result in a HUD audit or costly penalties.

The following are six items that could be treated as either income or assets. We will explain the deciding factors in each case and tell you how HUD Handbook 4350.3 says to treat these items.

By Carolyn E. Zezima, Esq.

HUD Handbook 4350.3, paragraph 3-16, spells out the rules for determining who can stay at an assisted site after the original qualifying household member dies or moves out of the unit. Whether the remaining member can stay depends on several factors, including the type of assisted site involved.

The contract between HUD and public housing agencies (PHAs) is called the annual contribution contract (ACC). The ACC requires PHAs to maintain adequate loss prevention programs, which include sufficient insurance for sites owned and managed by PHAs.

The Enterprise Income Verification (EIV) system was developed by HUD to verify income and employment information for applicants and tenants in all of the agency’s assisted housing programs. Information in EIV is derived from computer matching programs initiated by HUD with the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), for all tenants with valid personal identifying information [name, date of birth (DOB), and Social Security number (SSN)] reported on the form HUD-50059.

If a building at your site is infested with cockroaches or other such pests, getting all residents to cooperate with your efforts to control the problem is essential to your building’s well-being. Cockroaches are among the most widespread and persistent of all pest problems. In fact, in a list of the most cited deficiencies in public housing, insect or roach infestations ranked 17 out of 25.

As a site owner or manager, you must keep files containing required documents for each household. But it’s easy to make mistakes. And these mistakes can cause you to lose points on a management and occupancy review (MOR).