No matter how experienced you are, it’s tough to get your units in decent, safe, and sanitary condition. Especially while overcoming daily challenges such as tenant damage, unreported damage, razor-thin budgets, and aging properties is tough. Combine those challenges with oversight from agencies like REAC, and it can become stressful and feel like a thankless task.

Developing a Compliance Driven Maintenance Policy

Some rules and regulations govern eligibility, how much rent a family pays, and many other aspects of affordable housing. Many companies have specialists who monitor compliance with these requirements or outsource compliance to experts like US Housing Consultants.

But when it comes to maintenance and inspections, the standards are looser, less specific, and open to interpretation, and frequently – sub-standard results. With HUD’s NSPIRE initiative to include requirements for self-inspections with electronic reporting, now is the time for owners and managers to develop a compliance-driven maintenance policy.

The Importance of Leadership in Property Maintenance

The most effective maintenance policies include procedures for utilizing “a second set of eyes” who check the quality of maintenance performance in real-time, just like we do with LIHTC and HUD file approvals. How do you implement this sort of oversight while avoiding micro-management? How do make employees feel helped with the oversight and not hounded?

New REAC Rules and Expectations

As always, REAC rules and expectations are always changing. After years of using a risk-based approach for REAC Inspections, it became apparent that there is a big difference between low-risk and high-quality. Learn about the new REAC rule changes and expectations and how you should best prepare for your next inspection.

We’ll also discuss how to handle the new challenges of preparing for REAC Inspections during COVID-19 and just when REAC is expected to return to full operation.

The Progress of the NSPIRE Demonstration Program

HUD is working on a demonstration program named “NSPIRE,” which is to replace the inspection protocol used by REAC and institute new procedures to move the focus on inspections to safety and quality. The program also proposes to include:

• Using NSPIRE for all housing funding programs
• Changing REAC Inspection frequency to be up to 5 years apart
• Creating a new tenant focused system based on safety first
• New rules about enforcement on failed inspections and appeals

Join us and learn about where the NSPIRE demonstration program is what you should do to prepare for this substantial change to property inspections.

$109 NEAHMA Members

$189 Non Members