The Office of Housing is pleased to announce the release of the updated Compliance Manual for owners and/or property managers of Multi-Family Tax Exemption(MFTE), Incentive Zoning (IZ) and Mandatory Housing Affordability (MHA) programs, also known as Affordable Housing Incentive Programs.

The Compliance Manual is being released and owners and/or property managers can start using it immediately.  To help facilitate an on-boarding period, Office of Housing Compliance Liaisons will use this manual as the standard of audit for new applications on or after November 1, 2020.

The Compliance Manual can be found here.  We encourage you to visit the Seattle Office of Housing website for information and forms needed to implement and demonstrate compliance for MFTE/IZ/MHA Programs. 

The Compliance Manual was updated to provide more clarity, accommodate changes in industry practices, and respond to frequently asked questions.  A few changes to highlight are:

• Student Rule:  Students remain eligible, however additional verification steps will be required for student applicants who are claiming no earned income.  (pgs 15-16)

• Gift Income:  Further direction when gift income is included and when it is claimed by an applicant that a gift income has ended (pg 46)

• Venmo/PayPal/CashApp:  These sources of deposit are becoming more common.  The manual gives further instruction on when and what to count from these types of accounts (pgs 48-49)

• Income and Assets Calculations examples:  The manual now provides an Attachment B, which gives some examples of how to calculate common income and asset scenarios (pgs 54-62)