§13631 Requirement to Provide Service Coordinators

Summary

Owners of covered federally assisted housing that get money for service coordinators must hire or keep one or more people to arrange supportive services for elderly and disabled residents. No resident can be forced to take services. A service coordinator must talk with the owner, tenants and tenant groups, service providers, and others to find residents’ needs; manage and arrange those services; can offer or set up training about tenancy rules; must meet the minimum qualifications in section 8011(d)(4); and may do other helpful activities. Covered federally assisted housing means federally assisted housing, except two specific categories excluded by law. For some types of projects, coordinators can also serve low-income elderly or disabled families who live nearby. Supportive services can include health and mental health care, counseling, meals, transport, personal care and help with bathing or chores, housekeeping, help with medications (as allowed by State law), case management, personal emergency response, social activities, and education about telemarketing fraud, among other services. The federal housing official, working with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, must set standards for telemarketing-fraud outreach. Those standards must teach how common fraud is, how it works and how to spot it, how to protect bank, credit card, and other personal information, how to report suspected fraud, residents’ consumer rights, any other needed protections, and must be shared by suitable means such as on-site talks, public service announcements, printed materials, a website, and phone outreach to names seized from fraudulent telemarketers.