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HUD’s “one-strike” rule sets out specific grounds for denying admission to applicants based on certain drug-related and other criminal activity. It requires you to add certain screening criteria to your resident selection plan and lets you add other optional criteria to screen out applicants with drug-related and criminal backgrounds. And it requires you to determine whether applicants meet these criteria, by performing appropriate criminal background checks.

According to HUD’s Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (FHEO), disability-related complaints, including those that involve assistance animals, are the most common discrimination complaint they receive. To help explain reasonable accommodation obligations in housing and HUD-funded programs, on April 25, the FHEO issued Notice 2013-01.

The “sequester,” which has dominated news headlines since the election, is a term used to describe a series of across-the-board federal spending cuts. At the beginning of March, the cuts began to kick in when President Obama and members of Congress were unable to work out a deal. As a result, by the end of the fiscal year, $85 billion in automatic reductions to both defense and domestic spending will take effect.

When applicants apply to your assisted site, you must give them a written application to fill out, which asks for certain required eligibility and income information. If you don’t get this information, you could end up admitting an ineligible or inappropriate household. And that could mean trouble with HUD, including HUD’s refusal to pay the assistance on the household’s unit. Or you could improperly reject an eligible household and risk discrimination claims and more trouble with HUD.

Some of the most important, and often overlooked, sources of fair housing complaints arise from maintenance operations. Sites may face allegations of discriminatory maintenance policies or procedures—for example, that requests from white members are routinely pushed ahead of those from minority members. Or complaints may stem from accusations of sexual harassment or discrimination by a single individual—a member of your maintenance staff or an outside contractor.

The issue of mold cleanup has been on the forefront of state and federal officials’ minds as the Northeast continues to rebuild after Hurricane Sandy. Mold spores can aggravate existing respiratory problems, particularly asthma—and there was an alarming increase in asthma cases after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

When households move out of a unit, they may leave behind damage that’s expensive to repair. For example, a household may damage the carpeting so badly, it must all be replaced. Although you can deduct this cost from the household’s security deposit, the security deposit may not be big enough to cover the full cost of the repairs. Or there may not be enough of it left—the household may have moved out owing back rent, so you may have already applied the security deposit to the unpaid rent.

When you sign a lease with a new household, you must process certain documents. In some cases, this means that both you and household must sign the documents. In other cases, it simply involves giving the documents to the households. If you forget to give a document to a household or process a required document, you risk losing points on your management and occupancy review, and could face other problems, as well.

Screening applicants is becoming increasingly important for assisted sites. And visiting an applicant's home is an effective way to identify bad applicants. It can also help you get a head start in working with those applicants you ultimately decide to accept. At the Residences at Ninth Square, a site in New Haven, Conn., the management uses home visits with great success as part of a rigorous applicant-screening process. They perform the standard background checks on credit, criminal records, and prior evictions for each applicant.

During an inspection, Real Estate Assessment Center (REAC) inspectors look at specific areas of the site for health and safety hazards. Most of these hazards can cost you points on your inspection score but don't necessarily subject you to other, more serious penalties.