HOTMA compliance forms

If you run a public housing agency, do not buy HOTMA forms. HUD publishes a complete set free, and the page it sits on lists it as HUD Approved. The resource is called Sample HOTMA Compliant Forms, it is on the HUD Exchange, and its stated publication date is July 2026. It carries fillable application, reexamination and verification forms plus a customization guide, and it is scoped to exactly the programs a PHA runs.

The resource describes its own scope in one sentence: “This resource provides sample application, reexamination, and verification forms that public housing agencies (PHAs) may use as templates for their Public Housing and Housing Choice Voucher (HCV)/Project-Based Voucher (PBV) program applicants and participants.” That is the PHA answer, it is free, and QuorumFile sells nothing that competes with it.

What the forms do not do is make an agency HOTMA-compliant, and the reason is structural rather than a matter of quality. A form collects and verifies a fact about a household. Several of these forms only become operable once the agency has already made and adopted a discretionary policy choice — and HUD says so in the regulation, not in guidance. That distinction is the rest of this page.

Does HUD publish free HOTMA forms for PHAs?

Yes. The set is Sample HOTMA Compliant Forms on the HUD Exchange, published July 2026, and it is free with no account. It is organised into application and reexamination forms and verification forms, with a separate customization guide the resource page describes as instructions on how to tailor the forms to meet the needs of your programs and participants. An agency that has been quoted a price for HOTMA forms should look at this resource before paying it.

The application and reexamination forms, as listed on the resource page on 2 September 2026:

• Pre-Application
• Initial Eligibility: HCV
• Initial Eligibility: Public Housing
• Recertification: HCV
• Recertification: Public Housing
• Hardship Exemption Request
• Informal/Grievance Hearing Request
• Mid-Year Change
• Termination of Housing Assistance Due to Assets

The verification forms, as listed on the same page on the same date:

• Assets Verification
• Child Support Verification
• Childcare Hardship Exemption
• Childcare Verification
• Declaration 214
• Disability Verification
• Disability Expenses Verification
• Employment Verification
• Full-Time Student Status Verification
• Health and Medical Care Expenses Verification
• Non-Recurring Income Verification
• Reasonable Accommodations Verification
• Regular Contributions Verification
• Student Expenses and Financial Assistance Verification

Which HOTMA form set applies to my agency?

One of three, and only the first belongs to a PHA. A search for HOTMA compliance forms returns all three mixed together, because all three are real, current and correctly labelled at their source — the labelling is just not visible from a search result. The failure mode is quiet: an agency can work through the wrong set in full without anything erroring.

The quickest way to tell the first two apart is the form number. A PHA reports household data to HUD on form HUD-50058. The Multifamily drafting table is a TRACS collection built around form HUD-50059 and HUD-50059A, which are the owner’s certification forms. If the material in front of you says 50059, TRACS or Tenant Selection Plan, it was written for a Section 8 project-based owner and not for your agency.

Do the forms make my agency HOTMA-compliant?

No, and the clearest proof is in HUD’s own asset rule. 24 CFR 5.618(c)(2): “The PHA or owner may choose not to enforce the restrictions in paragraph (a) of this section or establish exceptions to such restrictions only pursuant to a policy adopted by the PHA or owner.” The operative words are only pursuant to a policy adopted. Until the policy exists and has been adopted, the discretion does not exist, and no form can supply it.

That is not an abstract point about HUD’s drafting. It is visible inside HUD’s own form list. Three of the application and reexamination forms above presuppose a policy the agency has already adopted: the Hardship Exemption Request and the Childcare Hardship Exemption both assume the agency has set the hardship terms it is exempting against, and Termination of Housing Assistance Due to Assets assumes the agency decided to enforce the 24 CFR 5.618 asset restrictions rather than exercising the 5.618(c) discretion not to. Hand a family the termination form before the board has adopted the policy behind it and the form is the record of a decision the agency never made.

The same section supplies the other half. 24 CFR 5.618(d): “The PHA or owner may delay for a period of not more than 6 months the initiation of eviction or termination proceedings of a family based on noncompliance under this provision unless it conflicts with other provisions of law.” Whether an agency uses that six months, and on what terms, is an election. The form set records the outcome; it does not make the choice, and it does not put the choice on the record where an auditor can find it.

What the free forms leave your agency to do

Two things, and neither is a document you can download. The first is making the discretionary elections — there are seventeen of them, each a place where HOTMA hands the agency a choice and then requires the choice to exist in writing before it can be enforced. The second is adopting them through the procedure in 24 CFR part 903: the 45-day notice before the public hearing required by 24 CFR 903.17(b), the Resident Advisory Board consultation at 903.13, the board vote in an open meeting under 903.21, and HUD’s 75-day review under 903.23.

Those steps have dates in them, which is why the forms question and the deadline question are the same question. Unless an agency is in the Moving to Work demonstration or files exclusively through HUD’s Family Reporting Software, HUD begins enforcing HOTMA sections 102 and 104 on 1 January 2027, per Notice PIH 2026-15 issued 14 May 2026. Working backwards through the 45-day notice and the 75-day review is what turns that date into this autumn’s calendar rather than next December’s.

Should my agency pay for HOTMA forms?

There is no reason to. HUD’s set is free, HUD-approved, current as of July 2026 and scoped to Public Housing and HCV/PBV. Forms are the one part of HOTMA implementation where the free option is also the authoritative one, and any priced form package for a PHA is competing with a HUD-approved document that costs nothing. Where money is genuinely at stake is policy language and the adoption record — a different purchase, with published prices that are worth comparing before committing.

Where this comes from

The regulatory quotations above were fetched from the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations on 2 September 2026 and are verbatim. Source edition: eCFR title 24, issue of 31 August 2026, fetched 2 September 2026 (section 5.618). The eCFR versioner reported title 24 as last amended 20 August 2026 and up to date as of 31 August 2026 when checked on 2 September 2026.

The HUD Exchange resource, its scope sentence, its stated July 2026 publication date, its HUD Approved status and the form titles listed above were read at hudexchange.info/resource/7371/sample-hotma-compliant-forms on 2 September 2026. The HOTMA Related Forms Drafting Table, its closed comment period, its 17 October 2025 comment deadline and its OMB control number 2502-0204 were read at hud.gov/hud-partners/multifamily-policy-drafts-hotma-forms on the same date.

One source on this page was not readable. ncsha.org served a Cloudflare challenge to every request on 2 September 2026, so the National Council of State Housing Agencies row in the table above relies only on that resource’s published title — Model Compliance Forms for Housing Credit Developments — and makes no claim about its contents. It is named because answer engines return it for this query, and a reader who arrived looking for Housing Credit forms should know that is a different set and go to the source.

QuorumFile is not affiliated with HUD, with any HUD field office, or with your Resident Advisory Board, and nothing on this page is legal advice. Your state and local open-meetings law sits on top of the federal adoption procedure and may require more notice than 24 CFR 903.17 does. This page covers the federal floor only.

Which document does my agency have to adopt into?

Enter your HUD participant code and the free Decision Sheet reads which programs HUD records your agency as running, and tells you whether that is an ACOP, an Administrative Plan, or both — then scopes the election catalogue to those programs and prints each election with its citation. No payment, and no account.