hi welcome to Tuesday tips I'm Pam
keskus one of the trainers here at
navigate and today we're going to be
talking about how navigate handles
resident concerns if you're in this
business long enough you are you know
that you're going to get concerns about
one thing or another residents must be
advised of how to address concerns so
you should always have a grievance

policy or let them know how they can get
any concerns they have addressed you do

that by giving them their resident
rights and responsibilities brochure you
should have the Discrimination is a
legal poster you should hand them their
how your rent is determined during
research um any fair housing postings
including vawa reasonable accommodation
information you should have your
grievance policy posted where they can
see it and you should have the poster of
the navigate contact information
so all of those things help to inform
residents of where they can address any
concerns biggest thing to remember with
resident concerns is you cannot please
everybody no matter what you do some
people are going to be unhappy with
something it may be something you did it
may be policies and procedures sooner or
later down the road somebody is going to
be unhappy about
something in some cases and we'd prefer
that they address it right at the site
level they talk to the property manager
and everything gets resolved but
sometimes they are going to go further
than that and call someone so how does
navigate receive concerns well we get
them from a number of different places
either the resident calls us directly
family of the resident calls sometimes
HUD gets a concern and they will ask us
to follow up or sometimes we get what's
called a congressional inquiry so
sometimes they'll call their congressman
and their Congressman will call with a
concern the important thing to remember
with these concerns is that we're here
to help we want to assist in finding a

solution and if there's management

non-compliance of course we're going to
address that but our Prime role is to
solve a problem or to help you solve the
problem things that we won't do we are
not going to determine management
policies management makes their own
policies we are not going to force a
particular Solution on anyone and we're
not going to insist on anything that's
not a HUD requirement so we may tell you
that HUD says X Y or Z but we're not
going to force a solution on you things
to keep in mind when concerns come in it
can be very challenging sometimes to
deal with an escalated resident whether
they're raising their voice or whether
you've explained something a number of
times and they don't seem to be
understanding it it can sometimes be
very difficult to deal with residents
who are upset especially if you're very
busy and then you have a resident coming
in with the same concern they brought to
you six times things you need to keep in
mind empathy remember that they're
coming to you because they're upset or
confused or frightened by something for
instance hotma with all the new
limitations if somebody gets a notice on
hotma and they don't quite understand it
it could be a very scary thing for them
so we always want to
empathize you want to keep in mind the
difference between things that you must
do things that HUD says you should do
and things that HUD says you can do
they're very different things and you
always want to keep in mind how much
flexibility you
have you want to pick your battles is
something that HUD said a rule is it a
must or is it a suggestion should or
can and you always want to be a A Ware
of when you might want to make a
reasonable
accommodation if somebody casually
mentions a disability or the need for
something or something that they're
finding difficult that's an opportunity
for you to discuss a reasonable
accommodation one of the biggest pieces
of advice that I can give a property
manager is do not take these things
personally many times somebody is
agitated or
escalated really because of something
that has nothing to do with you and then
whatever happened to have them come into
your office is just kind of the final
straw or the trigger don't take it
personally know when to walk away or
take time to consider an answer it's
okay to say someone to someone you know
I don't have an answer for you right now
but let me look into that and get back
to
you no one to disengage and continue a
conversation later if somebody is
yelling and cursing at you they're not
really in a good position to listen and
have a calm discussion so it might be a
time to say hey look I I can see that
you're really upset about this why don't
we set a time to talk about this later
when you've had a chance to to sit with
it a little bit um but then at by the
same token you're not going to accept
unacceptable Behavior it's okay not to
get cursed at management will have a
policy for how you can Le residents that
are yelling or Screaming or cursing at
you make sure you follow that policy you
want to keep in
mind phrasing things different ways can
often get a very different result so
instead of focusing on what you can't do
offer Solutions focus on what you can do
instead of saying nope we can't do that
you might want to try saying well let me
take a look at what we can do to help
solve that for you it just turns the the
conversation around into a more positive
approach here's the navigate process so
when we get a complaint the call or
email comes in we are going to speak
with the complainant we're going to
speak with management and gather
whatever information we need we'll
follow up as needed we'll report to HUD
as needed one of the things I want to
make you aware of is that we do
sometimes have very short deadlines by
which we need to update HUD so that's
why you will see one of our complaint
resolutions
Specialists that will
say Hey you know I need some more
information from you and I need it by
tomorrow and that's why they may follow
up with you in a very short amount of
time it's because HUD is asking us to
follow up in a very short amount of time
so please respond promptly to any
inquiries that you get from
navigate if it's going to take you some
time to gather information please let us
know what you're going to need to gather
and when it will be available so that if
we need to respond to HUD we have that
information if the tenant happens to be
under eviction please let us know that
as well that will change how we handle
complaints because once they're in legal
action we typically do not get involved
in those concerns once it's gone to
Legal it's a matter for the
courts the big thing to remember is we
are not taking sides when we look at
these concerns we're required by Hud to
assist with resolution
uh we ask questions of you to better
understand the situation not
to it doesn't show that we assume you're
doing anything wrong we're just trying
to gather information what you can do to
help yourself out in these situations is
document everything documentation is
your best friend make sure that if you
have questions that you asked a resident
things that you asked them to bring in
and they didn't if you have an
interaction that becomes contentious
document all of those things because I
don't know about you but for me
something I did six months ago may not
stick in my head very well so writing it
down right when I do it means that I can
go back to that later and know exactly
what that conversation was remember that
we can suggest but we can't insist on a
particular solution unless it's a HUD
requirement so we're really looking to
help you resolve a
situation no one likes complaints um
unfortunately they're just part of
working with people they're always going
to happen if you're in any kind of a
position where you are dealing with
other individuals our goal is to help
resolve them not to play the blame game
we're not looking to to say that anybody
did anything wrong we're looking to find
a solution and make sure everybody walks
away as happy as possible the best thing
that you can do regarding concerns is to
be proactive try to resolve them early
and try to resolve them on your own and
keep documentation of your efforts