Where a HOTMA policy template comes from

A public housing authority looking for a HOTMA adoption policy template in 2026 has six realistic sources, and three of them cost nothing. This page lists all six, says what each one actually hands you, and is honest about the fact that none of the six — including ours — hands you a finished, adopted policy on its own.

Prices and page contents below were read from each named source on 7 August 2026, except the peer-agency row, read on 6 August 2026. The two free HUD routes are first because they are genuinely first: an agency that has not read them is buying something it cannot yet specify.

The six sources, compared

Where can a PHA get HOTMA policy language for free?

From HUD, in two places. HUD Exchange is HUD's own resource portal for the public housing and voucher programs; read again on 7 August 2026 it carries a resource library of regulations, policy guidance and toolkits, FAQ collections, on-demand and upcoming training, and two program-support desks — Ask A Question for a basic policy or reporting question, and Request In-Depth Assistance for help implementing a HUD-funded program. None of it costs anything and none of it requires a vendor.

The second free source is HUD Notice PIH 2026-15 itself, which is where the enforcement date and the two exemptions come from rather than from any vendor's marketing. It is a 14-page PDF, it is free, and it is linked below. A correction worth stating plainly: between 28 July and 21 August 2026 this page said the notice could not be linked because www.hud.gov returned 403 and then 404 to every request for it. That was wrong about the cause. The notice was never withdrawn — HUD reorganised HUDCLIPS and moved it to a new directory under a new filename. It was re-fetched and re-read in full on 24 August 2026, and the enforcement date, the operational date and both exemptions on this site were confirmed against that text.

What neither free source does is decide anything. HUD publishes the rule and the deadline. The choices the rule leaves to your agency stay with your agency, and no amount of reading HUD Exchange converts them into an adopted chapter.

Can a PHA copy another housing authority's adopted ACOP?

Physically yes, and it is more common than anyone admits. Authorities publish their adopted plans as a matter of course — Newport News Redevelopment & Housing Authority's Plans and Reports page, under About Us, was read on 6 August 2026 and carried 27 posted documents, its 5 Year Agency Plan among them, with nothing asked of the reader. Hundreds of PHAs do the same. A peer agency's posted plan is a free, real, already-adopted document, and reading one is a genuinely good way to see what a finished chapter looks like.

Adopting one is a different act. The elections written into that document are that agency's elections — its asset-limit decision, its self-certification threshold, its hardship definitions, its interim reexamination policy — made for its portfolio, its staffing and its resident population. Copying them adopts another agency's judgment as your own without your board ever having considered the question, which is precisely the thing 24 CFR 5.618(c)(2) is looking for evidence of: a PHA may decline to enforce the asset restriction or set exceptions to it “only pursuant to a policy adopted by the PHA or owner.” A copied paragraph your board never deliberated is thin evidence of an adopted policy, and it is your file, not theirs, that gets reviewed.

What does a paid HOTMA template cost in 2026?

The published anchor is Nan McKay & Associates, whose storefront was read again on 7 August 2026 and still lists the Model ACOP and Guide at $1,079.00 for the digital document or $1,318.00 bundled with the digital revision service — the same figures it carried on 31 July 2026. Those are per document. An agency HUD records as running both public housing and vouchers needs an ACOP and an HCV Administrative Plan, which puts a Combined agency at $2,158 for the two digital documents, or $2,636 for the two bundled, before a single decision has been made or a single meeting held.

US Housing Consultants' HOTMA Ready Policies page, fetched on 9 September 2026, describes Tenant Selection Plan and EIV templates in Word format, available to download after checkout. No price was visible in the fetched page text; the checkout price was not independently verified. The earlier description of this offering as quoted on request was unsupported. The vendor's source page is linked below; confirm the current checkout price and the document's scope before buying.

What none of the six sources gives you

Two things, and they are the two that decide whether your amendment stands. The first is the elections. QuorumFile's catalogue counts 17 HOTMA policy elections a PHA has to record across sections 102 and 104, and four of them are not optional in the sense the others are — the regulation requires a written policy to exist at all, so a chapter that leaves those blank is non-compliant on its face whatever it cost.

The second is the adoption record, which no document vendor touches because it is not a document problem. If your agency's own published criteria make the HOTMA rewrite a significant amendment — that determination is yours under 24 CFR 903.7(s)(2)(ii), not HUD's — then 24 CFR 903.21 pulls the whole participation chain behind it: “Each significant amendment or modification to a plan submitted to HUD is subject to the requirements of §§ 903.13, 903.15, and 903.17.” In practice that is a published 45-day notice with the plan available for inspection for the same 45 days, a Resident Advisory Board consultation whose recommendations and your response are submitted in writing, adoption at a board meeting duly called and open to the public, and HUD's 75-day review before the amendment is deemed approved.

That chain is calendar, not drafting, and the calendar is the part that fails. A template bought in October for a January deadline is a document the agency cannot lawfully implement in January. The template was not wrong; the sequence ran out.

Which source is right for which agency?

If your agency has counsel or a consultant who will sit with you, make the elections and run the board sequence, start free: HUD Exchange plus a peer agency's posted ACOP as a shape reference, and buy a model document only if that person wants a drafting base. Paying $1,079 twice for language your consultant is going to rewrite is the common expensive mistake.

If you maintain your own ACOP in-house every year and have a compliance officer who knows the plan chapter by chapter, a model document plus the vendor's revision service is a sound standing arrangement and this page is not arguing against it.

If you are a small agency with no compliance officer, no consultant on retainer and a January 2027 date, the free sources will not get you there on their own and a template will hand you a document rather than a record. That is the case QuorumFile was built for, and it is the only case where we would tell you to buy from us rather than read HUD Exchange for an afternoon.

Before any of it: this may not apply to you

HUD Notice PIH 2026-15 exempts two populations — Moving to Work demonstration agencies, and PHAs that submit Form HUD-50058 exclusively through HUD's Family Reporting Software. Neither is settleable from anything HUD publishes: there is no FRS roster, and HUD's MTW layer has not been updated since 2018. So we do not tell you the deadline applies to your agency. Unless your agency is in MTW or files exclusively through FRS, HUD begins enforcing sections 102 and 104 on 1 January 2027.

Where this comes from

The HUD Exchange description, the Nan McKay list prices and the absence of a price on US Housing Consultants' HOTMA Ready Policies page were each read off those sites on 7 August 2026, and each was unchanged from the 3 August 2026 reading before it. The Newport News Plans and Reports page was read on 6 August 2026. Each describes that page on that day. We do not track them continuously; check the current figure before relying on it.

Both regulatory quotations are verbatim from the Electronic Code of Federal Regulations. Rather than re-fetch each section, the current issue of title 24 was checked through the eCFR versioner on 7 August 2026: title 24 was last amended on 13 July 2026 and is up to date as of 5 August 2026, which is earlier than the date each quotation above was last read from its section, so neither can have moved since. Election catalogue version 2026-07-28; source edition eCFR title 24, 2026-07-01 edition, fetched 2026-07-28.

QuorumFile is not affiliated with HUD, with any HUD field office, with Newport News Redevelopment & Housing Authority, or with any vendor named on this page, and nothing here is legal advice. Naming a competitor's published price — or its absence — is a statement about that company's website on one day and not a claim about the quality of its work. Both vendors named here are well regarded and this page does not say otherwise.

Which elections does my agency have to record?

Enter your HUD participant code and the free Decision Sheet scopes the election catalogue to the programs HUD records you as running, flags the ones that require a written policy, and prints each with its citation. It asks the MTW and FRS questions before it computes anything. No payment, and no account.