Many contractors and maintenance workers who have been on the job for years believe they know all about the dangers of and the precautions necessary for working with lead paint. Others think lead paint poisoning simply went away years ago. It didn’t.
Reports of water leaking from a bathroom ceiling or other types of water intrusion in a unit are serious complaints that deserve your immediate attention. Sometimes a pipe may break, in which case a household is not at fault. Other times, a resident’s child may have thrown toys down the...
For many owners already operating on thin margins, aggressive tax assessors may be their biggest concern since property taxes are likely to be their sites’ single largest expense. If you believe that your property taxes are too high because the local tax assessor has overvalued your tax...
Tax credit sites tend to operate on tight margins because of the competition to obtain these credits initially and the allocating agencies’ obligation to provide the minimum amount of credit necessary to make a deal feasible. Given these constraints, it’s no surprise that some sites...
Tax credit sites are required to abide by the nondiscrimination provisions of the federal Fair Housing Act (FHA) and their state or local fair housing laws. It's imperative that site owners and managers know the rules. The IRS has stated that a finding of discrimination by the Justice...
Deep rent-skewing is an attractive option for sites in cities where market-rate rents are high. If you manage or are about to manage a site in such a city, your site’s owner may have decided that it was more economically feasible to make your site “deep rent-skewed.” The owner...
Every manager’s worst nightmare is a violent crime against a resident at his tax credit site. And compounding the tragedy of the crime is the risk of liability. You could be held liable for the crime if you knew your residents were at risk of that type of crime. In legal terms, the crime...
If applicants fail to meet your tax credit site’s eligibility requirements or if they can’t pass your site’s screening criteria, you don’t want them arguing with you over the rejection, or worse, filing a fair housing complaint. But that can happen if you leave it to your...
It’s common to hire new employees who may have some experience in conventional site management, but no experience in tax credit site management. Because the tax credit program is complicated, you can’t expect these new employees to learn all the rules overnight. But until they get...
As we wind down 2013 and prepare for a new year, the Insider looks back and reviews the major events and changes that affected the low-income housing tax credit (LIHTC) industry:
When your state housing agency tells you the date it plans to inspect low-income units at your tax credit site, it’s a good idea to tell your residents. You can send a letter to residents telling them the date of the inspection and why the agency may be visiting their units. We’ve...
It’s not unusual for tax credit sites to be mixed-income, consisting of both low-income and market-rate units. Market-rate units aren’t rent-restricted and may be rented to households of any income. Even so, certain provisions of the tax credit law apply to those units. If you don...
