An ongoing series of tricks and short cuts you can use to help keep tabs on the affordable housing units in your portfolio.
One of the biggest violations of the affordable housing rules that a homeowner (or renter for that matter) agree to is the requirement that they use the unit as their primary residence. Leasing (or subleasing) a unit to a 3rd party is a huge no-no – unless it’s pre-approved by the Administrative Agent or Municipal Housing Liaison under one of the extremely rare provisions described in the Uniform Housing Affordability Controls (UHAC).
People that violate these rules tend to get very creative and deceptive in an effort to hide their scam. Some will continue to have certain mail delivered to the unit while they live elsewhere. After all, if you mailed them a letter and it gets returned to you as undeliverable by the Post Office, the jig is up! Instead, they might have an arrangement with their illegal tenant to, say, let them know when the tax bill arrives. Others will use the US Post Office’s mail forwarding service to have those same mailings forwarded to their real address. But, there’s an easy trick that you can use to outsmart people hiding behind the Post Office’s mail forwarding service.
Take a good look at some of the mail you receive this week. Anything that comes to you that is important will likely contain a phrase on the envelope that you might not even notice. “Address service requested.” These magic words set in motion yet another fantastic service by the Post Office. Here’s an image from the USPS showing all the acceptable places where this phrase can be added to the envelope.
Rather than auto-forwarding the letter under the previous service we discussed, they will send the letter back to you with a little yellow sticker that includes the recipient’s new address. How, cool is that? And now that you are armed with this new information that a) they don’t live there and b) you know where they live, you’ve got some really useful information to use in your next steps of dealing with the situation. But, we’ll save that for another article.