The truth of the old adage that "time flies" is certainly true. It has been quite a while since my last blog posting. I have been hard at work, alongside NCHM's Jo Ikelheimer and Tracey Merrill, developing our latest certification program, Blended Occupancy Specialist (BOS) for properties that have Section 42 Low Income Housing Tax Credits alongside HUD housing assistance.
BOS is intended as an "advanced" course, meaning we will not be training material already covered in our Certified Occupancy Specialist (COS) and Tax Credit Specialist (TCS) programs. The course debuts in April in Chicago. Additional details will be on our website: www.nchm.org
In other matters, HUD disclosed that on the date Enterprise Income Verification (EIV) became effective (January 31st) there were still thousands of housing providers who still didn't have EIV access. On the other hand, we've heard that there is still confusion about EIV, which is certainly no surprise to me as I lived through the confusion associated with TRACS when it was new. We also hear that the HUD multifamily help desk is swamped with emails.
There will be some who say that the housing providers who have waited until the last minute to try to get "up and running" on EIV are deserving of whatever aggravation they now suffer since the industry has known for about two years that this was coming. On the other hand, HUD kept changing the implementation dates, so it is understandable that some housing providers adopted a "wait and see" attitude.
I hope that HUD will take a judicious approach and not sanction those housing providers who made due effort to obtain EIV access but, for one reason or another, are still without it.
