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HUD shortens inspection notice time

Official calls measure ‘extreme’

Housing authorities and the owners of private subsidized housing throughout the nation have received up to 120 days’ notice before Department of Housing and Urban Development inspections.

Starting today, those owners of subsidized housing will get a mere 14 days’ lead time before HUD’s Real Estate Assessment Center (REAC) inspections, which take place every year, every other year or every third year — depending on the scores of prior inspections.

HUD has shortened the notice time to discourage owners from making “cosmetic, just-in-time repairs to their properties rather than adopting year-round maintenance practices,” stated a February HUD news release.

Too many owners have been making “quick fixes, essentially gaming the system,” stated HUD Sec­retary Ben Carson in the news release.

“I think it’s extreme,” said Altoona Housing Authority Executive Direc­tor Cheryl Johns at a meeting on Wednesday of the lead time shrinkage.

The change will make it harder for the authority, which does indeed prepare for REAC inspections by sending out notices asking residents to report issues with their apartments and by making necessary outside repairs, according to Johns and Jim Stephens, director of maintenance operations and modernization.

Stephens took a cynical view of the rules change, suggesting it might be a strategy for HUD to save money, as shorter notices will make it harder for authorities to earn bonus capital funding by becoming “high performers” like Altoona.

Asking residents to report problems in their apartments helps alert the authority to issues that would otherwise remain hidden, like holes in the wall, overflowing toilets and smoke alarms disabled if they start nuisance beeping, officials said.

REAC inspectors check outside facilities and the interiors of selected units looking for problems like deteriorated fencing, eroded yards, ponding, overgrown vegetation, deteriorated weather stripping, damaged doors, lights that don’t work, cracked wall finishes, misaligned water heater chimneys and corroded piping, damaged ceiling tiles, according to a REAC field guide provided by Stephens.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.

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