Inspections

Every unit is inspected on a cycle, and who is allowed to carry the inspection out depends on who owns the building. That is the one rule the whole of this page turns on, and Housing enforces it rather than asking the office to remember it.

The property	Standard	Who inspects
The authority owns and manages it — traditional public housing	UPCS, and now NSPIRE	Somebody independent. HUD's own inspector, or a contractor. Not the authority.
A private landlord owns it, leased with a Section 8 voucher	HQS, and now NSPIRE-V	The authority. It is the inspecting agency here, so its own staff inspect.

An authority cannot inspect the housing it owns and manages, because it would be marking its own work. HUD steps in instead. On a voucher unit the position is reversed: the landlord is the one being inspected, and the authority is who does the inspecting.

Everything is moving to NSPIRE. Both predecessors stay selectable, because an authority mid-transition still files under them and a record has to say which standard was actually applied.

Telling Housing which is which

Ownership is set on the property, under Properties, because it is a fact about the building rather than a choice made per inspection.

• The authority owns and manages it is the default, and it is what every property created before inspections existed is treated as. It is the answer with the stricter rule, so nothing is quietly let through by an omission.
• A private landlord owns it needs the landlord's name. They are who a deficiency goes to.

The standard follows the ownership: HQS is not offered for a property the authority owns, UPCS is not offered for a voucher unit, and moving a property from one side to the other moves its standard with it. Inspecting every 12 months is the default; an authority on a two- or three-year NSPIRE cycle can change it.

The roster

Inspectors is who the authority can send. Each entry is one of two kinds, and the kind is the rule rather than a label:

Kind	Can be booked for
Staff — the authority's own	Voucher units only
External — HUD, or a contractor	Everything

An external entry has to say which organisation the inspector works for. That is the half of the record showing the inspection was independent, so it is required rather than optional. Recording their certification and its expiry date is optional, but an expired certificate takes somebody out of the pickers until the renewal is recorded.

Inspectors are retired, never deleted. An inspection names who carried it out, and an audit that cannot say who inspected is not an audit.

The cycle

An inspection is opened for one unit, by hand or by the nightly run, 45 days before the unit is due. Opening it pins the ownership and the standard onto the record: a property changing hands later does not rewrite what an earlier inspection was carried out under.

Stage	Meaning
Unscheduled	Opened, nobody booked
Scheduled	An inspector and a date
Corrections required	It failed, and the findings have deadlines
Passed	Closed
Failed	Corrections were not made, and the office has said so
Cancelled	Called off before it happened

Booking is where the rule bites. On a property the authority owns, only the roster's external entries are offered, and the API refuses the pairing even if something else tries it. Booking emails the household — and, on a voucher unit, the landlord, because the repairs will be theirs.

Letting the inspector file it themselves

An outside inspector has no CivicPort account and is not given one. Two visits a year does not justify an identity, and an authority cannot make HUD's own inspector sign up for anything.

So the office sends them a filing link from the inspection. The link:

• opens that one inspection and nothing else — no household, no rent, no other property, no access to the authority;
• needs no account, no password and no sign-in;
• expires after 30 days, and stops working the moment the report is filed;
• can be withdrawn, and sending a new one kills the previous link.

The inspector enters their findings and signs the filing in their own name. That signed filing is the independent report, which is why no separate report number is demanded of them.

When the office types the findings in instead — transcribing a report that arrived by email or on paper — an inspection of the authority's own property needs the inspector's report number recorded. The record has to stand on the independent report, not on the office's word for it.

Findings and their deadlines

Each finding carries an NSPIRE severity, and the severity sets the deadline. Nobody types a date in:

Severity	Correct by
Life-threatening	24 hours
Severe	30 days
Moderate	30 days
Low	60 days

A finding also records where it is (inside the unit, inside the building, outside) and whose job the fix is. A resident-caused deficiency is recorded against the household rather than held against the property.

The household is emailed the list with its dates, and a life-threatening finding says so plainly.

Closing it out

This is the second half of the rule.

• A voucher unit. The authority is the inspecting agency, so once every finding is marked fixed the inspection passes there and then, and the unit's next date is set.
• The authority's own property. Marking the repairs done records them, and does not close the inspection. An independent re-inspection does. Opening one carries the outstanding findings across so nobody retypes them, and it is subject to the same rule: it needs an external inspector too.

Each fix is stamped with who recorded it, when, and whether it beat its deadline.

What runs overnight

The same nightly job that opens recertifications:

• opens each unit's annual inspection 45 days before it is due;
• gives a unit that has never had a due date one, rather than opening an inspection — so turning this on does not open an inspection for every unit an authority owns on the same morning;
• flags a correction whose deadline has passed.

It never marks anything failed. A deadline passing is a fact; calling an inspection failed is the office's decision.