The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a management alert this week, saying that the department has struggled to identify and prevent “improper payments” related to its programs for 11 consecutive years.
The OIG advised HUD leadership to “address the Department’s longstanding challenges with identifying and preventing improper payments,” and that HUD “has been noncompliant with federal laws requiring agencies and departments to identify, report, and mitigate improper or unknown payments in their programs.”
OIG findings
In an ongoing audit, the OIG discovered that HUD was “unable to estimate improper payments for its two largest rental assistance programs” for a seventh consecutive year, specifically as it relates to the Office of Public and Indian Housing’s Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (PIH-TBRA) program and the Office of Multifamily Housing’s Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) program, for fiscal year 2023.
The OIG went on to state that the last time HUD has produced “sufficient estimate of improper payments in these programs” was in 2016, when it estimated a total of $1.7 billion in improper payments.
“Since then, these rental assistance programs’ payments have increased substantially from $30.7 billion in FY16 to $45.3 billion in FY23, which is 67.5% of HUD’s total expenditures for that fiscal year,” according to a summary of the report. “Without sound estimates, HUD is unable to develop appropriate corrective actions and target resources to fix the root cause of improper payments, resulting in higher risk for potential fraud, waste, and abuse.”
The OIG is also concerned that HUD will not be able to properly estimate t