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When is FHA Required?

fj80

fj80

Sawhorse
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Jan 18, 2016
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Virginia
Not really a building code question, but how and where does one determine when FHA regulations are required for an apartment building design?
 
Maybe there is a need to clarify which FHA we are referring to. The Federal Housing Administration, now a part of HUD, has construction standards that the house must comply with in order to get a loan.
 
Mark K said:
Maybe there is a need to clarify which FHA we are referring to. The Federal Housing Administration, now a part of HUD, has construction standards that the house must comply with in order to get a loan.
Click to expand...
I'm referring to the Fair Housing Act, for an apartment building.
 
Mark K said:
Maybe there is a need to clarify which FHA we are referring to. The Federal Housing Administration, now a part of HUD, has construction standards that the house must comply with in order to get a loan.
Click to expand...

Back in the early 50s the contractor I worked for seldom built FHA homes, most of his homes were hillside, on the upper side we always did retaining walls approximately 8' high, none of our homes were engineered back in those days, we normally built the back form wall, set 16d common nails in the form boards and wired the rebar to the nail heads approximately 2" off the back form with 8" or sometimes 10" thick walls. One day the county inspectorsigned off the foundation inspection like he did on all of our homes, then the FHA inspector came out, looked down into our forms, and said: "You guys don't know what you are doing, tear this all down and install the rebar 2" off the front form, after doing that the county inspector came back for something and saw it, he wanted to know what happened? We told him about the FHA inspector required it, we didn't do it for fun, he said to tear it back down and put it back the way it was when he signed it off. If I knew what I know now I would have argued that federal law supercedes state law; however, with California first blatently refusing to honor federal drug laws on marijauna, and now refusing to honor federal laws on sanctuary cities and even a sanctuary state, I have no idea where the courts are going to go, surprisingly Calfiornia's attorney general is arguing 10th Amendment rights, the same argument the Southren States' Democrats, and then Dixicrats, refused to obey Civil Rights laws, they didn't get far with that since the 14th Amendment came after the 10th Amendment overriding it

Another situation was that when we built most homes we did monolithic pours for the attached garage floors, with FHA houses we had to pour stem walls and come back and pour the slab inside the stem walls later so there was at least a 4" step up to the house and the garage floor could drain ¼" to the foot to the garage door so people could hose out their garages and gas leaking out of cars wouldn't run back into the house. That may still be the case, I don't know, the last FHA house I built was 1959.
 
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The attorney for the former Los Angeles Housing Department (now HCIDLA) determined that FHA applied for apartment projects which received a temporary or permanent C of O dated after 3/13/1991. This applied to market rate apartments as well as government subsidized projects.
Typically most of the FHA provisions kick in when the apartment development has 4 or more units.

Also worth noting that for affordable housing, it's not the Section 8 rental vouchers that's triggering FHA; it because the housing is governed by Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and has 4 or more units.

***

In addition to / and separate from FHA, depending on financing and interface with the public, your apartments may also be subject to:

1. Section 504/UFAS for projects and building sites that were ever recipients of HOME, CDBG, HOPWA or other federal (HUD, USDA, etc.) funds; or for project-based section 8 vouchers, or for FHA Sec. 221(d)(3) interest rate program.

2. ADA Title II for Section 504/UFAS for projects and building sites that were ever recipients of HOME, CDBG, HOPWA or other federal (HUD, USDA, etc.) funds; or for project-based section 8 vouchers; or for city-issued or CSCDA-issued tax exempt mortgage bonds; Federal or State LIHTC; and of course for any public business portions of the apartments, such as the rental office and its parking, related restrooms, related path of travel, etc.

3. Your local Building Code.
 
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