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hi and welcome to nan McKay's webinar on the cares Act waivers for pH programs an overview of notice PIH 20 2005 my name is Samantha Swords I'm the manager of curriculum development and a senior trainer here at nan Mackay & Associates and over in the next hour hour and a half or so we're gonna go over each of the waivers that HUD granted under the cares Act so as you're probably well aware HUD has a kovat 19 information and resources website I just wanted to point this out to you before we get started so they launched a website dedicated to their code 19 response and it has information for all sorts of HUD programs not just PIH programs so there are FAQ FAQ sheets etc some are specific to housing authorities some are specific just a ph programs in general and HUD has said that this week sometime they're gonna release a new set of FA cues so you should be on the lookout for that in relation to this pH notice I'm going over today HUD did a webinar on last week and they said that there going to be some new FA cues that deal with not only questions they've been receiving but some of the questions that came up in that webinar so be on the lookout for that okay but what I'd like to do today is give you an overview of notice PIH 20 2005 and then we'll dig into the specific waivers that your PHA may or may not decide to adopt so the cares Act gave PIH the PIH arm of had broad authority to create waivers for both statutory and regulatory requirements but even though the Act did that obviously the PAH branch of arm PIH arm of HUD needed to issue a notice to let housing authorities know which statutes and regulations they were going to waive and so they issued notice pH 20 2005 on April 10th 20 20 and as you'll see there are a bunch of both statutes and regulations that are being waived by this notice if you want to do something that is not covered in this notice you may still request regulatory waivers from HUD so there's a notice ph 20 18 16 that tells you how to do that and so you would request a waiver in accordance with that for those waivers you may not implement them until you get HUD approval for everything under this new notice 20 2005 you don't need HUD approval to implement them but if you were requesting a regulatory waiver from HUD outside of this notice then you would need HUD approval prior to implementing it so what we're talking about today like I said is this PIH notice 20 2005 and it's applicable to the public housing program the Housing Choice Voucher program including special-purpose vouchers like fum Vash etc the project-based voucher program and then Indian housing programs we're gonna focus on those first three bullets public housing HCV and PBV in this webinar and we're going to talk through each and every waiver that the notice grants the effective date of the waivers is immediately so the notice was issued on April 10th and from April 10th forward housing authorities may begin using this waiver and these waivers and on the call that HUD had on this notice someone asked well gosh you know we had to implement some of these things prior to the effective date of this notice is it okay that we did that because just for our business purposes we needed to get this done and had said that they had asked their legal team about that and unfortunately their legal team said you only have the authority to do this from the effective date forward and HUD said well okay but for housing authorities that maybe did some of these things prior to the effective date we're not going to come out and you know essentially get you in trouble for doing these things when you needed to continue running your business and continue serving your residents and your families so the effective date is April 10th though for all of these but if you did something prior to that while technically not allowed by the notice you're probably okay the other thing is if you decide that somewhere down the road you want to implement one of these waivers you can do that at any point during the applicability period so as an example maybe there's a waiver that is applicable until October 31st as an example and today you don't think you need that waiver but as you continue to run your business through the next few weeks you decide gosh no you know what we really need to implement this that's okay so you don't have to implement everything all at once you can make this decision at any point during the period where the waivers are applicable and the applicability periods for these waivers vary so even though the starting point is April 10th how long they last kind of depends and HUD categories them as two different types of waivers so there are short-term waivers that give you flexibility that you need because your normal operations are probably severely disrupted generally those expire July 31st 2020 and then there are long term waivers that allow you to defer sort certain important but kind of less critical aspects of your day-to-day business and generally those expire December 31st 2020 I'll give you specific expiration dates as we go through and talk about the different waivers and now HUD can extend the applicability period of these waivers and they may do that in the future but for now the applicability periods that are in this notice or what we're going to go by and you're not required to keep a waiver in place for the entire period so none of us obviously are psychic we don't know how long our our business is going to be severely disrupted at this point and so it could be that a month from now maybe it doesn't make sense for you to have one of these waivers and so maybe you want to stop implementing it that's totally fine you're not required to run it through the applicability period the implementation of all of these waivers is totally optional so if you go through this notice and you listen to what I'm telling you today and you think nope none of these really makes sense for our agency then that's totally fine you can implement some all or none of the waivers whatever makes sense for your situation in your area now if you do adopt one of the waivers and it has an alternative requirement then you have to comply with the terms and conditions of the alternative requirement now sometimes there will be like a minimum thresholds in the waiver that you have to meet but you can exceed it or some of them will have mandatory language like well you have to do this in order adopt the waiver and so if you decide to adopt any of these waivers you do want to carefully read the notice and see exactly what HUD is telling you you have to do if you implement the waiver now the important thing to know here is HUD notification or approval is not required to adopt any of these waivers I want to say that again because we've been getting a lot of questions on this you do not need HUD approval you do not need to notify HUD the whole goal of this was to give housing authorities a bunch of waivers that they could implement as of April 10th and move forward immediately right because time is of the essence here because our business is disturbed at this point and we need to get these things implemented as quickly as possible if it's something that we need so you do not need to get HUD approval to do this if you decide to adopt one or more of these waivers then you do have to keep written documentation that records what you did but it's very basic documentation so you have to say what waivers did you choose to apply and when did you choose to do that what were the effective dates and HUD actually provided a table at the end of the notice where you can go through and say which ones you implement it and it literally just lists what the waiver is and then there's a box where you can check off if you did that waiver and then right in the effective date and so it's a really simple way to record what you did now you're not required to use that format if you want to do something else that's fine huh did provide that for you as a means of recording which waivers if any you are implementing again you don't need to send that to HUD or anything you just need a record of what you decided to do if you do apply any of these waivers had said you do need to notify your participants and where applicable in the voucher program in PBB program your owners as soon as practicable right as soon as practicable and it says of any impacts that the waiver and alternative requirements may have on them and HUD says you do that by whatever means is considered most effective okay so you have to let folks know right your families your owners if applicable about the impacts of the waiver how that's gonna affect them how do you actually do that right now right what HUD said is well initially what you could do is you could publish something on your website talking about what you're doing and then you could have a voicemail message on your main or general information phone line that says what you're doing so you could put it on your website record something on your phone line and leave it at that for now and then when it's practicable right because it's said as soon as practicable you would follow up with some sort of formal written notice to your families to owners now remember that we're communicating with our families and owners we need to have effective communication to persons with disabilities and ensure that folks who are LEP limited-english-proficient also have meaningful access to our programs so those requirements relating to fair housing don't go away because of this and so you need to think through that as well okay so that's the introduction let's get into the actual nitty-gritty of what these notices do and we've broken it down into a couple categories the first one that we're gonna look at is waivers that are applicable to both public housing and HCV and they're where you see HCV that could be PBV as well where we're applicable so I'll point out where PBB kind of comes in as well but again we're going to talk about applicable waivers for public housing and HCV all right so the first thing that you were probably thinking about is your PHA policies I know that's where my mind went and is what happens with our admin plan with our a cop when we adopt these waivers so what HUD said was your admin plan and you're a cop's can be temporarily revised without board approval right right now it may not be possible for you to convene a board meeting to talk about new policies in your admin plan and you're a cop so that's okay HUD says you can adopt new policies revise them on a temporary basis without board approval however there's a catch the informally informally excuse me adopted revisions under the waiver have to be formally adopted as soon as practicable following June 30th 2020 but no later than July 31st 2020 so the bottom line by July 31st 2020 those things need to be formally adopted into your policies now just because you can't have board meetings doesn't mean you're probably not in communication with your board members or maybe you're doing virtual board meetings or something like that right and so you can make this sort of fit whatever the situation is at your Housing Authority but HUD is giving you some flexibility here realizing that gosh you may not be able to convene a regular board meeting and so you have some time to adopt policies that you need to adopt and then formally adopt them later on down the road okay let's get into your five-year plan your annual plan submission dates significant amendment requirements for these policies so your 5-year plans and your annual plans have submission requirement dates as you can see on the screen depending on what your PHA fiscal year and right depending on if it's in June or September or December and so there were submission dates that HUD had and because of this they realize that gosh you might need to submit later and so there are some revised submission dates on the screen there and I won't read through all of them there for you but you can see um that you've had an extension on when your five-year and your annual plans are due and this does not apply to PHAs with a fiscal year end of March 31st but for those of you with June September or December fiscal year ends this is what applies to you and then typically what happens is if you're going to make a significant amendment right and you're gonna make a modification to your annual plan you can't adopt that and until you've called a board meeting that's open to the public the modification is provided to and approved by HUD right that's how normal business works well again that may not be something that you can do right now and so what HUD has said is any change to your policy that would normally trigger a significant significant amendment requirements can be implemented without triggering the process now they said except for if you're doing section 18 section 22 or rad well gosh that makes sense right you're not gonna sneak in a rad conversion right now without you know a significant amendment process so other than that you don't need to trigger the process if you're making any significant amendments you do have to notify families of any impact significant amendment may have on them again by whatever means is most effective so we talked about recording something on your general information phone line posting something on your website and this is available until July 31st 2020 that you can use this waiver okay then let's dig into a little more nitty-gritty stuff which is family income in composition right there's a lot of questions around annuals and interims and how rent is calculated and all that that this is brought up so let's talk about that so the first thing I want to bring up is actually not in this notice but we've been getting these questions in our inbox and so I wanted to make sure to share this with you just in case you may have missed it so again not in this PIH notice but something I think it's important to share so we have gotten a lot of questions about the $600 temporary unemployment benefits and that are being given to families through the cares Act and are those include an annual income or excluded well HUD multifamily actually posted something that said they are excluded and so we were waiting on HUD PIH to tell us what to do and HUD in an email to named McCain associates on the 17 to confirm that that $600 temporary unemployment benefit is excluded from annual income they said that when they publish their forthcoming set of FA cues they will say that in writing but for now I promise that's what had told us in an email and they will say it in writing soon so you're going to exclude that $600 temporary unemployment benefit and also the question about the one-time stimulus payments are those included or excluded that one you could probably figure was excluded and you'd be right right it's just a one-time payment I mean HUD has actually said that in writing in their Kovan 19f a queues for housing authorities so both of those payments are excluded okay now to get back into the PIH notice that we're discussing so family income and composition the first thing we're going to talk about is doing annual re-exam z' and as you can imagine a lot of folks are having trouble conducting annual reexamine working from home or folks don't want to come into the PHA offices or whatever it is you might be having some trouble right now conducting annual is very understandable so the first option that you have for annuals HUD says is under this notice you can delay annual re-exam x' the delayed annual reexamine need to be completed by 1231 of this year so if right now it's just not practicable for you to conduct annuals that's okay you could adopt this option and delay doing annuals and not do till twelve thirty 120 so you still need to do them you just get some leeway in the amount of time you have the other thing is you could instead continue to conduct annuals but you could use streamline income very vacations and so I want to dig into what that would mean okay so the current requirement for conducting annuals and for verification is that you have to follow the verification hierarchy right so II IV is the highest best form of verification there is on down on down on down to tenant declaration right where we live by that verification hierarchy whenever we're doing recertifications well HUD has said that you could forgo third party income verifications for annuals including the use of a IV and you could consider self certification the highest form of income verifications for annuals so for example over the phone verification that you document with a written record where you talk someone on the phone and you write a record through email through postal mail with a self certification form by the family or other electronic communications right all of that is fine if you adopt this waiver so again let me say that you could delay annual reexamined not complete them till twelve thirty one twenty right and have them all done by twelve thirty one twenty or you could continue doing reexamine streamlined verifications where we sort of throw the verification hierarchy out forgo third party income verification including use of Vav and instead take self certification as the highest form of income verification for annuals and these are optional if you want to keep doing annuals the way we've been doing annuals that's totally fine but you have these flexibilities it says or hide in this notice says hey make sure that you remind families of their obligation to provide true and complete information right because the concern here obviously is that families are not going to come provide you with complete information and and they remind housing authorities there isn't a HUD requirement that you conduct re-exam in person unless obviously as a reasonable accommodation for a person with disabilities so currently even if you don't adopt waivers there's nothing in the regulations that says you have to conduct reexamine in person so that does give you some flexibility as an agency beyond these waivers and then HUD says you know you're you as a housing authority are responsible for addressing discrepancies that may arise later so at some point we're going to get back to business as usual and for example maybe through the income validation tool you show that a tenant keeps working right and they told you they had lost their job as a result of the pandemic but it turns out that no in fact they were working and you find that out through eiv obviously you would need to act on that information once we're back up and running so the availability of these waivers ends July 31st 2020 so if this is something you want to adopt there's that's the window of availability all right next thing to discuss is interims so one thing that makes very clear upfront at the beginning of the notice HUD has not provided a waiver that would allow families to stop paying rent in public housing or HCV and also PBB obviously by extension so there is no waiver that allows families to just stop paying their rent and the reason for that is they say you know you need to have procedures in place to do timely completion of interrupts there's a requirement that you process interim decreases and so if a family comes to you and says well gosh I lost my job or my income has been severely reduced because of everything that's going on what HUD is saying is we don't say oh that's okay we're not making anyone pay rent what you would say is okay we're gonna do an interim for you and be based on that right you're your share of the rent or your rent is going to be reduced so there is no waiver to just wholesale say families don't have to pay rent in public housing or HCV but HUD reminds you hey you should be doing interim decreases for these families when that happens right so if a family completely loses all their income and is zero income they're gonna go down to zero rent anyways okay and then as far as the requirement goes for entrances you're well aware you as a housing authority have policies in you're a cop in your admin plan about when families have to report changes in income or family composition and then the regulations say that at any time families can request an interim because of any changes in their income or family composition and you have to make the determination within a reasonable time after the family makes that request the regulations also and notices also talked about how eiv is mandatory during all re-exam zuv family income in composition and that there's a verification hierarchy that you have to follow same type of thing we talked about in the annual section well the alternative requirements say something very similar to what we saw in the annual section and they say well gosh if you want to adopt this waiver you are not required to follow the verification hierarchy for interrupts so you can forego third-party verification you including using eiv you can consider self certification the highest form of income verification for interrupts okay so again similar to what we saw in annuals so you're not allowed to say again nobody has to pay rent but you would conduct interim recertifications but you can use lower forms of verification to conduct those interrupts again HUD reminds you there's no requirement that interims need to be conducted in person unless as a reasonable accommodation for a person with disabilities again you have to address discrepancies that might arise later and then you can review and adjust your current interim reporting requirements right so beyond this regulatory waiver as an example when you do interim increases is really up to your policy some PHAs do know interim increases between annuals some every single you know nickel that a family brings in they're gonna do an interim and some have some sort of hybrid where you know if the family's income increases by a certain percentage or it's a certain change from one type of income to another etc well as a housing authority you can adopt different policies so maybe you're one of those housing authorities that has said every change in income that's an increase needs to be reported to the housing authority right well now in light of what's going on maybe that policy doesn't make sense anymore and so maybe you're going to change your interim policy to say we're not gonna do interims between annual recertifications for increases again you're required to do interims for decreases you do not have flexibility there but outside of these regulatory waivers you really have flexibility to think about when you do interim increases so that's something to think about outside of this waivers do you want to make those changes to your admin plan you're a cop for interrupts okay so this waiver that I've been discussing also ends July 31st 2020 a IV monitoring is the next topic that we're going to discuss so the requirement is you have to monitor certain giv reports in accordance with notice pH 2018 18 which is the big verification notice like the deceased tenants report identity verification report etc the alternative waiver that you can adopt is HUDs waiving mandatory eiv monitoring requirements through July 31st 2020 so if you want to say look we have other things to concentrate on right now besides monitoring IV you can just stop monitoring those reports through July 31st 2020 all right let's talk about the FSS program family self-sufficiency program and the contract of participation so the requirement right now is that FSS contracts the participation have to be or may be extended excuse me for a period not to exceed two years upon a finding of good cause well as you can imagine the circumstances surrounding kovat 19 qualify as good cause so you may extend contracts of participation for the FSS program for period not to exceed two years under this waiver the period of availability to extend the contracts ends December 31st 2020 meaning the contract could go beyond December 31st 2020 but your period to do the extension is between now and December 31st alright let's talk about waiting list opening and closing so the requirement around waiting lists in public housing and HCV is that when you're opening the waiting list you have to give public notice by publication in a local newspaper of general circulation minority media and other suitable means the alternative requirement now says yeah you're gonna provide public notice but you could do that in a message on your main or general information phone number and through your website again you have to ensure effective communication for persons with disabilities and persons who are limited English Proficient but rather than going through the public notice in publications steps again you could do it on your website and on your phone line that ends July 31st 2020 as well okay so those were waivers that were applicable to both public housing and HCV now we're going to look at the waivers that are applicable just to the HCV program so this is broken down into two categories for someone to talk about general HCV program waivers and then there are a bunch of waivers related to HQs that I'll talk about in the second half of the HCV section so first let's talk about just general HCV program waivers okay so information when family is selected right here we're talking about the oral briefing that happens in the HCV program so the requirement right now in the regs is that when you select a family for HCV or PBV you have to do a written and an oral briefing right well as you can imagine conducting an oral briefing might be a little bit difficult right now and so the waiver that you can adopt HUD says is you can conduct briefings by other means so you could do webcast video call or they say you could even do an expanded information packet rather than meeting with families again you have to ensure effective communication but they're giving you a lot of flexibility to sort of be creative here with your briefings and do them by another means besides what you've traditionally been doing and that is available through July 31st of 2020 next topic is the term of the voucher as you can imagine there are probably a lot of families out there who need their voucher term extended so the current requirement is that the Housing Authority can grant one or more extensions of the initial term of the voucher in accordance with your admin plan so you already have the ability to decide how many extensions you give if any the term of those extensions and the reason you're going to give an extension so that's currently something you decide in your admin plan the alternative requirement that HUD is allowing you to adopt here is that you could provide extensions even though you have not formally amended your PHA policy in other words let's say you have a PHA policy that says we grant one extension of sixty days and we will not grant any other extensions unless as a reasonable accommodation I'm just making up a policy right because all of that is up to your admin plan well let's say that's your policy right now you could say gosh right now that doesn't make sense for us we want to be a lot more generous in our extensions of our term and so we want to just give folks you know a 120 day extension or something like that just across the board no matter what and that's totally fine you can do that without having to formally amend your PHA policy so the period of availability to make that in that decision is July 31st 2020 okay approval of assisted tenancy when the HAP contract is executed so if you think back to your HCV specialist training for nan McKay right you probably remember learning that you may not make hat payments until a HAP contract is executed that makes sense you have to use your best effort to execute the HAP contract before the lease starts but if you can't quite do that HAP contracts have to be executed no later than 60 days from the beginning of the lease term and any HAP contract that's executed after that time is void right so again you remember that from your HCV specialist training I'm sure well the alternative requirement I'd realize is that it might be difficult right now to get that HAP contract executed within 60 days from the beginning of the lease term and so they say you can execute a HAP contract after the 60-day deadline and pay HAP retroactive to the beginning of the lease term but they put a maximum in there and they say that you have to execute the hack contract with the owner no later than a hundred and twenty days from the beginning of the lease term so you have a whole bunch more time to get that HAP contract executed if you adopt this waiver and the availability of this waive our ends July 31st 2020 okay next let's talk about absence from the unit so the current requirement against probably something you remember from your HCV specialist training is that the family may not be absent from the unit for more than 180 consecutive calendar days for any reason now you might have a PHA policy that is a lesser period of time than that right you might say 60 days or something like that but the regulatory maximum for the whole family to be away from the unit is a hundred and eighty consecutive calendar days so the alternative is you may continue hat payments and not terminate the HAP contract due to extenuating circumstances well what are extenuating circumstances and the examples HUD gives our hospitalization extended stays at nursing homes or caring for family members so you might have let's say a single person who's head of household and they're ill and they have to be hospitalized for an extended period of time right and they're out of the unit for more than 180 consecutive calendar days the regulations themselves do not give you the flexibility to go beyond 180 days it's a max however under this waiver they're saying you can continue paying half and it's okay if they go beyond that hundred and eighty days for extenuating circumstances this ends December 31st 2020 may not make payments beyond that date the HAP contract will terminate if the family is still absent upon that date okay let's talk about automatic termination of the HAP contract since we were kind of talking about termination of the HAP contract already so the requirement this is getting at zero HAP families the requirement is that when an HCV families income increases to the extent that the HAP payment would be zero you have to terminate the HAP contract within how many days 180 right 180 days after the last half payment to the owner well the alternative that you could adopt now says upon written notice for the owner and the family the housing authority can extend the period of time following the last payment to the owner so that 180 you can extend it and you as a housing authority determine the length of the extension but it cannot go beyond December 31st 2020 so there may be a reason to do this that makes sense for you and so you can decide what the length of that extension is going to be this ends December 31st 2020 as well what if you are increasing your payment standard under a HAP contract that's already in place so we're going to talk about next so the current requirement when the housing authority increases its payment standard during the term of a HAP contract is that the increase amount is applied at the effective date of the family's first regular re exam on or after the effective date so what does that mean if you were to raise your payment standards effective April 1 right for all families who have annual recertifications after April 1 you would need to use the new higher payment standard and this happens at families annuals not interrupts so if someone has an interim on April 10th right that wouldn't apply it's when they have an annual after the effective date of the increase then you would apply the new higher payment standard the alternatives that you may adopt as you may apply increase payment standards at any time an interim and an owner rent increase after the effective data increase no later than the effective date of the family's first regular exam following the change so really what that's getting at is when you increase your payment standard what happens to the family share of the rent it goes down right so that's a good thing for families if you raise your payment standards and you tell all the families well families gosh sorry we can't give you this increased payment standard till your annual which is maybe eight months from now that doesn't help them that much so what this is saying is at their next interim or owner rent increase or any time after you increase that payment standard you could apply that increase the payment standard to those families who are currently in a HAP contract so this benefits families by giving them a higher payment standard sooner now what happens if you've adopted that waiver where you are delaying family's annual recertifications right earlier we said hey you can delay recertifications you still gotta get me done by December 31st 2020 but you can delay families annuals well if you adopted that and you're increasing payment standards for families what do you do well HUD says you must use the increased payment standard beginning the date the family's first regular agree exam would have been effective in absence of the waiver so let's say you're delaying annuals but you're gonna have a payment standard increase effective May 1 as an example and the family would have had an an annual on June 1 right then that family would need an increased payment standard on June 1 even if you are not doing an annual so what you can do is you can conduct an interim where the only change is the increased payment standard right you're getting that family some more help but increasing your payment standard in either case payment standard increases have to be effective no later than the family's first regular re-exam first annual reexamine the increase so this flexibility ends December 31st 2020 utility allowance schedules right you're required to review and revise your utility allowance schedules at certain times we're going to talk about that so the requirement says housing authorities have to review utility allowance schedules each year and revise them if there's been a 10% or more change in the rate since the last revision the alternative that you could adopt is that you may delay the review and update of utility allowances right if you think we have a lot going on we need to concentrate on other things you can delay reviewing and update utility allowances and the availability of this any review and update of UAE's that were due at some point this year in calendar year 2020 have to be completed no later than December 31st 2020 in other words if you were supposed to reviewed at some point this year you can delay it but by December 31st of this year you do need to do it all right and then let's talk about the home ownership program some of you may have a home ownership program so to be eligible for home ownership assistance generally families have to participate in an agency provided counseling session right that is a requirement of the homeownership program you must participate in agency provided counseling before you can receive assistance and the family has to attend complete the pre assistance homeownership counseling program and then eligible families can move under portability and purchase a unit if the receiving Housing Authority is administering about your home ownership program and accepting new home ownership families but they have to attend the RHA the receiving housing authorities briefing and counseling session so this is all about the family has to attend the counseling session essentially right well the alternative is HUD said we don't want to hold up the ability for families to be able to enter into a home ownership and so the Housing Authority may permit the family to purchase the home without fulfilling the normally applicable pre assisting pre assistance homeownership counseling requirement so if you have a homeownership program you have the option to waive the counseling requirement that ends July 31st 2020 ok next one is about the family unification or FUP program if you have sup vouchers so FUP youth if you again have vouchers for FUP youth has to be not more than 24 years of age to be eligible to be placed on your half contract in other words they have to enter into a half contract before their 25th birthday so anywhere 25th birthday before their 25th birthday they can enter into a HAP contract as you can imagine there are folks right now who maybe are having trouble leasing up with their vouchers and so HUD said ok you can execute a half contract on behalf of someone who's an otherwise eligible supp youth up to their 26th birthday right so any day before their 26th birthday so they just bump this up by year so previously was any day before their 25th birthday now it's any day before their 26th birthday this ends December 31st 2020 okay so remember I said that in HCV there were sort of two sets of requirements one that dealt with general HCV program waivers and the rest that dealt with HQs and so we're going to talk about HQs housing quality standards so just as a general overview a lot of these waivers with HQs have to do with delaying inspections and we're gonna again go through specifics but that's generally what they're about is delaying inspections because obviously right now you may not be able to go into folks units right your inspectors that may not be prudent for them to enter units so if you delay inspections under these waivers you have to inspect units as soon as reasonably possible when it is again safe to do so and you're going to see there's some specific time periods around that as we go through these specific waivers so there are time periods that HUD specifies and then whatever those time periods are you need to to abide by those HUD may provide extensions but right now there are time period solicitude notice and you need to abide by those if you do adopt any of these waivers you still have their right to conduct an HQs inspection on any assisted unit at any time so this does not mean that you can't go into units at all if you adopt these waivers you still have the right to go into units and conduct inspections and then if you do adopt any of these waivers it doesn't relieve owners of their responsibilities under the HAP contract it doesn't restrict your ability to enforce the obligations under the HAP contract and it doesn't create the right for any third party like the family to require that HUD or the housing authority and conduct any enforcement or making a legal claim against HUD or the Housing Authority for damages injunction or other relief for alleged failure to enforce HQs okay with all that in mind let's talk about the waivers so there are a bunch of waivers I'm going to talk about together because they all say the same thing so one of the main things that these HQs waivers do is it says that you can enter into a HAP contract without conducting an inspection at certain times what are those times well the initial inspection in HCV if you're using the alternative inspection requirement under hotma for your HCB and PPV programs if you need to do pre HAP contract inspections in the PBV program for unit turnover inspections in the PBV program in other words when someone moves out of a unit before someone else moves in and then if you're going to add or substitute units in the PBV program and I apologize my slide says PBB that should say PB v program okay so in all of these scenarios you can enter into a HAP contract without conducting that inspection of the unit initial inspections and HCB alternative inspections under hotma prehab contract PPV inspections turnover inspections and PPV and adding and substituting units and PPV however there are some criteria around that if you're going to do that and then you need to get a certification from the owner that says they have no reasonable basis to have knowledge that life-threatening conditions exist in the unit or units in question right so they need to certify to that and at a minimum that's what you have to do so you could say as an example we are not doing initial inspections for the HCV program we are going to sign hap contracts without doing that initial inspection however we require that the owner give us a certification that they have no reasonable basis net knowledge life-threatening conditions exist in the unit okay if you want to add additional requirements you absolutely may so the minimum is the owner certification but then you can add additional requirements on top of that now does that mean you never have to inspect the unit no it just means it's delayed you have to conduct the inspection as soon as reasonably possible no later than October 31st 2020 so again for initial inspections if you're relying on alternative inspections in HC BMP BV under hotma for prehab contractor inspections in PB v for turnover inspections in PB b and for adding or substituting units on the hap contract in PB v you can take an owner certification you can require more information on top of that certification and you still need to inspect the unit in those circumstances you just have until October 31st 2020 to do the inspection so maybe right now it doesn't make sense for you to do those initials and your HCV program but you do need to do them at some point right no later than October 31st 2020 this also applies to PHA owned units if that your independent entity is unable to perform inspections and both the HCV and the PBV programs your period to accept owner self certifications ends July 31st 2020 and then your period to do the inspections again ends October 31st 2020 so earnest owner certifications through July 31st and then you have to get out there and do your inspections by October 31st okay housing some other HQs things besides that which which really that was a bunch of the waivers initial inspections non life-threatening deficiencies option what this is talking about is under hama housing authorities have the option to approve assisted tendency and execute a HAP contract and start paying HAP if a unit fails the initial HQs inspection if there's no life-threatening conditions right so this was an optional policy you could adopt under hotma honestly I have not seen a ton of housing authorities doing this but if you did adopt this policy then what would happen is if there were no life-threatening deficiencies then you could approve the tenancy execute the HAP contract start paying HAP even though the unit failed because there's no life threatening conditions and then the life threatening conditions have to be corrected within 30 days and if they're not then you would withhold HAP so this is an optional thing under hotma this has nothing to do with this regulatory waiver this came out as a result of hotma a couple years ago so if you adopted this policy the alternative that you can adopt now is that HUD waive the requirement to withhold HAP if non-life-threatening repairs are not made within 30 days you can provide an extension of up to an additional 30 days and continue to make hat payments so in other words instead of saying you're gonna withhold HAP after 30 days you could say up to 60 days for the owner to make those repairs but after that 30-day extension you would then withhold HAP this is available for both HCD and PBV program as well as PHA owned units again I haven't seen a ton of housing authorities adopt this policy you would need this policy in place to even implement this alternative but if you have this is a possibility so this is available your period to approve additional extensions and July 31st 2020 your period to make the repairs could extend further but the giving the extension stops July 31st and then the period to inspect units place under half contract under this provision just like the other ones ends October 31st 2020 all right let's talk about your buy any inspections under HQs right so right now the regulation says you must inspect the unit not less than biennially during the term of the hap contract so you could go annually or you could go every two years or you could do a mix of the two in your policy right you could say for certain owners we're gonna do annual and for others we're gonna do biennial based on these criteria or something like that whatever your policy is and the alternative is that you may delay biennial inspections for both PPV and HCV as well as PHA owned units but you need to complete them no later than October 31st 2020 again so how does giving you some time realizing that you may not be able to go out and do inspections right now so you can delay them but they do need to be completed no later than October 31st of this year all right let's talk about interim inspections so the current requirement is that if the family or a government official notifies the housing authority that the unit doesn't comply with HQs you have to inspect the unit within 24 hours if it's life-threatening and within 15 days if it's non-life-threatening but it does say that HUD can waive this in the event of extraordinary circumstances as you can imagine these are extraordinary circumstances right we'll get into that so the housing authority is not required to conduct an on-site inspection to verify repairs have been made currently right now right if you have the family or government officials saying that a unit doesn't comply with HQs the Housing Authority is not required to conduct an on-site inspection of verify repairs have been made you can rely on alternative verification methods like photos or tenant certifications if you're not currently doing this you could start right this is something that existed prior to these waivers that's absolutely fine so the alternative here though since these are extraordinary circumstances is that if the deficiencies are life-threatening you the Housing Authority has to notify the owner who must either correct the deficiency within 24 hours or provide documentation the deficiency does not exist and they can do that through text or email a photo to Housing Authority so if there's life-threatening deficiencies you notify the owner they're correct within 24 hours and then they could text or email you a phone over there if they're non-life-threatening you have to notify the owner and within 30 days the owner has to either make the repair or document it doesn't exist and then you can give them an extension and then you can add other documentation requirements if you want so this applies to HCV PBB and PHA owned units it ends July 31st 2020 after July 31st 2020 you have to conduct the HQs inspection in accordance with applicable time periods okay then let's talk about quality control inspections under HQs the normal requirement is that you have to conduct supervisory quality control inspections of a sample of units under contract as you can imagine right now HUD is waiving this requirement so if you want to waive quality control inspections you can do that the period of availability ends October 31 2020 space and security for HQs what this is getting at is that requirement that it you have at least one bedroom or living sleeping room for every two persons in the unit right those are the HQs space standards one bedroom or living sleeping room for every two persons in the unit that applies hcv it applies to ppb the alternative requirement is HUD said well gosh some families might need to have folks move into their unit for a variety of reasons related to kovat 19 so families can add members as a result of Kovan 19 even if the unit would not meet HQs space standards if we would overcrowd the unit now this does not apply to an initial or new lease and the participant must not enter into a new lease for the unit in other words if I sign a new lease today and the unit is going to be overcrowded that's not okay but if I sign the lease six months ago and then I'm gonna add some people to my unit and that's gonna overcrowd my unit that's okay so the waiver is in effect for the duration of the current lease term or one year from the date of this notice whatever is longer and then again back to the homeownership option if you have a homeownership program and initial HQs inspections the current requirement is the housing authority may not commence monthly homeownership payments until the housing authority has inspected the unit and determined that it passed your alternative here is that HUD is waiving this the families still required to obtain an independent inspector and the housing authority is still required to review the independent inspection and could disapprove the unit so you don't have to inspect the unit determinant passes each dress but the family still has to get an independent inspector and you have to review that inspection that ends July 31st 2020 okay who's how is the HCV program so so far we've talked about waivers that are common to HCV and public housing we've talked about waivers that just affect the HCV program and now we're going to talk about waivers that just affect the public housing program and the first one you might imagine right is the community service and self-sufficiency requirement right now as you're probably well aware non-exempt public housing residents have to do eight hours a month of either community service or economic self-sufficiency programs or combination of both and if they don't non-compliance is grounds for non renewal of the lease at the end of the lease term as you might imagine it is very difficult for families to do their community service requirement when they are sheltering in place right probably impossible and so HUD is suspending the community service requirement tenants would not be subject to community service until their next annual right and this is probably one you're gonna want to implement just because again if we're sheltering in place how is anyone supposed to do community service so what will happen is at their next annual when you're doing their five-eight right it asks about their status under community service if the person is exempt you're gonna continue to code them as exempt but if their person who would have done community service but it's been suspended you're gonna code them as pending right pending means that there was a suspension you don't know if they're compliant or not and you'll talk about their compliance at their next annual so after their annual then the community service requirement becomes effective again for the next cycle this ends March 31st 2021 right so we've got some time on this one over income families in public housing so one of the requirements under hotma was that housing authorities are required to either terminate or charge a higher rent to families whose income exceeds the maximum income limit rate the public housing over income limit for two consecutive years so the alternative policy here is if you do the delayed annual waiver you may not know about the chain' any changes in the family's income or be able to track this so if you adopt the delayed annual waiver the family can remain in their unit and continue to pay the same rent until you conduct the annual that would have that would impacts the family right so in other words you have to adopt the delayed annual waiver in order to adopt this one and the family would stand there unit continue to pay their same rent until you conduct the next annual that would impact the family that applicability ends December 31st 2020 fiscal closeout of capital grant funds so the requirement actual development cost certificate certificates ADCC are submitted twelve months from the date of completion or had termination of a development activity and then actual modernization cost certificate or an AMC C is submitted not later than twelve months from the activity's expenditure deadline what has had done here they said well as an alternative they're extending the deadlines for an ad C C and an AMC C that fell between March 31 of this year and September 30th of 2020 by six months so you're getting an additional six months total development costs in public housing so right now public housing regulations have a maximum project cost representing the total amount of public housing funds that can be used for development of a public housing project and HUD publishes these total development cost or tDCS and housing contract construction costs or HCC limits periodically and the limit cannot be exceeded without a HUD approved way or a HUD approved exception well guess what HUD is approving an exception so the alternative here is the amount of public housing funds committed to development of a project may exceed the applicable TDC and HCC limits by twenty-five percent without a waiver so just right now without a waiver they can exceed by 25 percent amounts in excess of 25 percent and up to 50 percent maybe approved by HUD program offices on a case-by-case basis with sufficient justification so if you need to be in excess of 25 percent up to 50 percent you contact your HUD program office and then if you still exceed the limit after the HUD approved increase is taken into consideration you can submit a request for an exception or request a waiver for other good cause so you could even go beyond that so the 25 percent and you can do without a waiver and then beyond that then you need approval these this alternative requirement applies to public housing developments mixed finance developments and choice neighborhood developments all your other requirements of the development still apply and a complete development proposal has to be submitted to HUD no later than December 31st of 2021 and yes that's not a typo it does say 2021 and the notice for a project to be eligible for this waiver costs and other limitations types of labor so the current requirement says non high-performing PHAs can use force account labor for modernization only when the use of such labor has been included in the CFP five-year action plan approved by the board and HUD alternative requirement that you could adopt says non high performer housing authorities can use force account labor for modernization activities even if it's not included in your five-year action plan okay and that ends December 31st 2021 energy audits housing authorities are required to complete an energy audit for each housing authority own project not less than once every five years that's the current requirement the alternative HUD is suspending the performance of audits for one year for those that were due before December 31st 2020 so any that were dude if before December 31 2020 are suspended for a year and this is available for one year beyond the date of the energy audit deadline in 2020 for the impacted project so you get an extra year resident council elections your current requirement in public housing is that your resident council has to have certain minimum standards regarding elections and at least once every three years for each council member there has to be an election well obviously right now that may not be feasible and so HUD says you can delay resident council elections beyond the three year limit if necessary because right now that might be necessary however the delayed election has to be rescheduled and held as soon as possible once circumstances permit which is July 31st 2020 right so by July 31st 2020 you would need to do that election review and revision of utility allowances we talked about this already for the HCV program so this is for the public housing program the public housing regs require that you have to review at least annually the basis on which utility allowances have been established and revised if required on the basis of that review just like in the HCV program you can delay the review and update of utility allowances again you might have other things that you need to focus on right now so when do you need to do this might well review an update of you A's that were due sometime in calendar year 2020 have to be completed by the end of 2020 so we still need to do them it's just postponing if they're due next month right you have to do them by the end of 2020 tenant notifications for changes to project rules and regulations so you might be changing some of your rules and regulations regarding your families in your public housing projects now the requirement currently is you are required to provide 30 day notice to impacted families for changes to your policies your rules any special charges anything like that the alternative HUD says is gosh we realize you might have to make some changes right now to how you run your business to your policies etc so HUD is waiving the requirement for advance notice with one exception you still have to give advance notice for changes related to tenant charges other than that they're waiving the requirement for advance notice and then you still need to provide adequate notification to families within 30 days of making the change but you don't need to give an advanced right so the difference there is between were too advanced and adequate so no advance notice except for changes related to tenant charges but then you still have to provide adequate notification to impacted families within 30 days of making the change this ends July 31st 2020 all right we're almost done now we're going to talk about a couple other little things that didn't quite fit in the other categories so we're going to talk about foz or fast however you like to pronounce that CMAP and uniform financial reporting standards so for faz and CMAP PJ's with faz and c map scores pending as of the date the notice came out or with a fiscal year-end honor for December 31st 2020 what's HUD gonna do for your fasten your seat map scores they're not going to issue new faz and see map scores unless you request it what they're gonna do is carry forward the most recent faz or C map score on record okay so no new phazon see map scores they're going to carry them forward unless you request that they don't do that and you want a new score availability HUDs gonna resume issuing new scores to housing authorities with fiscal year end dates of March 31st 2021 so not for a while and just a quick word just do it a little bit deeper with faz right obviously under faz there's a physical inspection component one of the the indicators is about physical inspections and HUD is waiving the inspection requirement and alternatively postponing inspections for all PHAs until further notice right because react inspectors are not going to go out and inspect units so all of those inspections are postponed until further notice unless there is a threat to life or property so the notice goes into what what does that mean but in general your inspections are postponed for the physical inspection component of fast uniform financial reporting standards so the requirement currently is you have to submit financial information in accordance with the regulations annually no later than 60 days after the end of the fiscal year of the reporting period and you have to submit your unaudited financial statements no later than 60 calendar days after the end of your fiscal year and your audited financial statements no later than nine months after the end of your fiscal year so these deadlines have moved as you might imagine so the deadlines are on my screen so depending on your fiscal year and there's a due date and then there's the extended due date so you see June September December and then March and when those were originally do and what the extended due date is and I'm sorry that was for audited financials my first set of slides there I don't know if I said that or not so let's just make sure that you get to see those and then for unaudited financial same thing the due dates were extended so you see your PHA fiscal year and the due date and the extended due date there and again these are in the notice as well okay and then just a couple other waivers and administrative relief and then we will be all set going over the whole notice so reporting requirements for year 500 5/8 so the current requirement as you're probably well aware is that housing authorities have to submit 500 5/8 no later than 60 calendar days from the effective date of any action recorded online to be of the form right so 60 days from the effective date of the action you need to submit your findings and HUD monitors you write for timeliness of reporting and could sanction your Housing Authority for late reporting that may not be feasible for you right now for a variety of reasons so HUD is waiving the 60-day deadline and they're saying you have to submit your 5/8 for transactions impacted by implemented waivers and alternative requirements within 90 days of the effective date of the action now they encourage you if you have the operational capacity to continue submitting your 5/8 timely to keep doing that but you may adopt the waiver if you need to waiver of 500 five eight submission requirements could impact your ability to submit five eighths through pic and potentially could result in fatal errors in pic by doing that mph said they're going to issue guidance provide workarounds to avoid those potential pic issues they realize there might be pic issues they will issue you guidance on what to do so they're not HUD is not going to require housing authorities that receive a fatal error during your 5-8 submission to resubmit consistent with the reporting requirements provision in the waiver HUD PIH encourages housing authorities to not resubmit these forms until after they revise their guidance and for housing authorities that submit forms successfully in the interim period before the new reporting guidance is issued PIH HUD pH may require correction and resubmission so essentially what they're saying is you should really wait for the guidance about how to do this and the availability of this provision ends December 31st 2020 designated housing plans so the current requirement for designated housing plans is HUD has to notify the PHA that they that submitted a designated housing plan whether the plan complies with all their requirements within sixty days and so HUD right now is saying that's really just not feasible and so heads waiting the 60-day notification requirement for your designated housing plans that were submitted after March 1 2020 this ends July 31st 2020 unless subsequently extended by hat so if you've submitted a designated housing plan to HUD after March 1 2020 that 60-day notification requirement is being waived extension of your deadline for a programmatic obligation and expenditure of capital funds so the current requirement is housing authorities have to obligate capital funds no later than 24 months after the date on which the funds became available or the date on which the housing authority accumulates accumulates adequate funds to undertake modernization substantial rehab or new construction of units plus the period of any approved extension and then HUD can extend the obligation time period as necessary if failure to obligate timely was due to some event beyond your control well guess what this is an event beyond your control right so there we'll talk about what HUDs doing about that so the other requirement is you have to expend capital funds not later than four years after the date on which the funds became available for obligations plus a period of any approved extension right the regs don't permit extension of the expenditure dates other than for the period of time of a HUD approved extension of the obligation deadline so the alternatives HUD is extending both your obligation end date and the expenditure end date for all open capital fund grants by one year from the current obligation and expenditure ending however no programmatic expenditure end date will be extended beyond one month prior to the closure of the relevant appropriation account and that is it so thank you so much for joining us for this webinar today I hope you got some good information out of it I hope everyone at your Housing Authority is staying safe and as well and thank you for joining us you