§501. Selection and preferences

A. Each housing authority shall adopt and promulgate policies establishing a plan for selection of applicants. The plan shall include standards for eligibility, procedures for prompt notification of eligibility or disqualification, and procedures for maintaining a waiting list of eligible applicants for whom vacancies are not immediately available. Eligible applicants shall be offered available vacancies as provided in said policies. Such policies and plans may, but shall not be required to, include:

(1) That a local housing authority may deny a lease, right of occupancy, or any other assistance to any person, including the family or household of such person, if it determines that such person or any member of such person's household either:

(a) Has committed any fraud or made any misrepresentation or omission deemed material by the local housing authority in connection with any application for assistance.

(b) Has committed any fraud or made any misrepresentation or omission deemed material by the local housing authority in connection with any previous application for any public assistance or in connection with any determination or redetermination of eligibility therefor.

(c) Possesses a personal history which exhibits violent, disruptive, antisocial, or criminal behavior, with or without criminal convictions, which, in the determination of the authority, renders such person unsuitable for occupancy or receipt of assistance.

(d) Because of a history of poor credit or housekeeping or other deficient behavior, is otherwise likely to fail in meeting all lease terms, authority rules and regulations, or other requirements of occupancy or of the authority's program of assistance.

(2) Preferences to give priority to persons displaced by public or private action, to families of veterans and servicemen, to families whose members are gainfully employed, to citizens of the United States or this state, to persons with disabilities or who are elderly and such other preferences, as well as priorities within each preference category, as the local housing authority deems appropriate.

(3) Occupancy standards that provide for offering available units only to families of appropriate size and such other standards relating to occupancy and tenant conduct as the local housing authority deems appropriate.

B. Without limiting the foregoing, the local housing authority may further limit the offering of available units to families of appropriate qualifications in order to comply with state or federal law or regulations or contractual agreements with governmental agencies pursuant to such law or regulations.

C. Nothing contained in this Section shall prevent a housing authority from suspending processing of applications of persons of eligible income unlikely to be offered units within a reasonable time after initial application as determined by the authority or requiring annual renewal of applications.

Acts 1997, No. 1188, §1; Acts 2014, No. 811, §22, eff. June 23, 2014.