Nogales Housing Authority outlines corrective actions after HUD compliance review

Nogales Housing Authority officials reviewed a HUD field office compliance monitoring report at the Board of Commissioners meeting on May 7, 2025, and described corrective actions already completed and others in progress.

Executive Director Maritza presented a timeline of the review’s findings and corrective actions, saying the review "was a comprehensive monitoring review" and noting there were no findings in finance. She outlined multiple corrective steps the authority has taken or will take, some with completion dates.

The most immediate corrections included: adding a question to the housing application to capture prior states of residence (completed April 28, 2025) so staff can perform state-specific criminal-history checks; creating time sheets to document staff time consistent with the authority’s cost allocation plan; and instituting a records-destruction procedure for criminal-history reports with a log noting the person’s name, verification that the background check was completed and the date of destruction (staff must review existing files; anticipated completion: June 2025).

Maritza told the board that several items related to the Bowman project were previously submitted to the HUD field office and were placed in a separate crate for review. "We had all 3. However, not in that crate. They have been submitted to the field office, and the date of completion for that was yesterday, 05/06/2025," she said.

On participant and tenant-file documentation, Maritza said staff obtained additional third-party verification where files lacked sufficient documentation and submitted corrected materials to the field office. "The ones that needed to be resubmitted to HUD were resubmitted and the rest... have been taken care of," she said, adding the corrective submissions were completed May 6, 2025.

Housing Choice Voucher administration was another substantive finding. The monitoring report said the PHA "failed to properly apply the payment standard to HCV tenant files" and required interims to be conducted to rectify affected files. Maritza said the authority will perform a more in-depth study of payment standards and reasonable accommodation situations moving forward. "Back in November of 2024, I brought before you a resolution approving the fair market rents and the payment standards," she said, adding that decisions about whether to keep payment standards at HUD-recommended percentages or to vary them will be brought to the board.

Finally, the authority identified an error in calculating a tenant’s total tenant portion and housing payment tied to utility allowances. Staff retroactively corrected the utility allowance for the affected tenant and arranged for back pay for the allowance that should have been provided.

The director framed the review as a compliance check rather than an adverse rating. "This was a compliance review. It doesn't go against our rating or troubled status or anything as such," she said, and presented the timeline and documentation the authority submitted to the HUD field office.

Board members asked clarifying questions about the Section 8 management assessment program and about whether items dated to the February on-site review or earlier records; staff responded that the findings were from the recent review and that some corrections required going back through historical files.

The board did not take separate formal action on these corrective items during the meeting beyond receiving the report; staff indicated they will return with policy updates and additional documentation as the remediation proceeds.

The report and timeline remain on file with the authority and were distributed to the HUD field office as part of the corrective-action response.