NSPIRE Final Scoring Notice Released
On July 6, HUD released the “National Standards for the Physical Inspection of Real Estate and Associated Protocols, Scoring Notice” for public inspection. It will be officially published in The Federal Register on July 7, 2023. Public Housing inspections were scheduled to begin July 1, 2023.
The notice outlines how NSPIRE inspections will be scored and responds to comments submitted in response to the Proposed Scoring Notice. It significantly revises the proposed notice in two ways.
- The final notice eliminates the new letter grade requirement. Now, NSPIRE scores will no longer provide a letter grade categorizing a property’s physical condition based on the inspection score it receives.
- Projects that have one deficiency in multiple parts of a building will only have points deducted once per “inspectable area”—units, inside common areas, and outside areas—but not multiple times per each inspectable area.
The final notice does not revise the new methodology, which prioritizes resident health and safety by prioritizing units most heavily. Final scores will be calculated by weighting each deficiency the inspection finds. Weights are determined by the location and severity of the deficiency. Those found in units are weighted more heavily than common areas inside buildings, and deficiencies outside of buildings are assigned the lowest weights. At the same time, “life-threatening” deficiencies, as defined by HOTMA, are given the greatest weight and the lowest severity deficiencies are given the lowest. Therefore, a life-threatening deficiency found in a unit will result in the largest possible score deduction of any single deficiency.
The NSPIRE Administrative Procedures Notice was published on July 3, 2023. For more information, please see the pre-published Final Scoring Notice, NAHRO’s July 3rd NSPIRE coverage, and the forthcoming July 15 edition of The NAHRO Monitor.