We recommend that the Director of HUD’s New Orleans Office of Community Planning and Development require the Parish to Repay its program from non-Federal funds for $9,849 in payments made to contractors for duplicate payments and overpayments.

We recommend that the Director of HUD’s New Orleans Office of Community Planning and Development require the Parish to support or repay its program from non-Federal funds $1,020,121 for payments made (1) for work that the contractor(s) did not perform and excessive material costs; (2) that lacked adequate supporting documentation for change orders, independent cost estimates, and invoice documentation; or (3) for the 10 HOME-funded rehabilitated homes not brought up to code.

We recommend that the Director of HUD’s New Orleans Office of Community Planning and Development require the Parish to establish and implement desk and onsite monitoring policies and procedures to ensure that documentation is maintained to support that (1) adequate supporting documentation for payments is filed, tracked, and maintained; (2) the necessity for all change orders is verified and reasonableness of the costs is assessed; (3) cost estimates are completed before the bidding process; (4) work is completed before pay requests are approved and payments are made to the contractor; and (5) contractors are properly monitored throughout the rehabilitation process, including progress and final inspections.

We recommend that the Director of HUD’s New Orleans Office of Community Planning and Development require the Parish to correct the property deficiencies identified during the onsite inspections related to the 20 contracts as applicable.

We recommend that the Director of HUD’s New Orleans Office of Community Planning and Development require the Parish to inspect the remaining 33 homes for compliance with the contract specifications and HUD requirements and correct deficiencies as applicable.

We recommend that the Director of HUD’s New Orleans Office of Community Planning and Development require the Parish to establish and implement complaint policies and procedures and ensure that its staff is aware of the procedures to ensure that participant complaints are properly handled in a timely manner.

We recommend that the Director of HUD’s New Orleans Office of Community Planning and Development require the Parish to review and adjust staffing levels as needed to ensure adequate coverage.

We recommend that the Director of HUD’s New Orleans Office of Community Planning and Development require the Parish to provide training to staff members to ensure that they are aware of policies and procedures and their responsibilities related to expenditures, monitoring, and addressing participant complaints.

We recommend that the Director of HUD’s Newark, NJ, Office of Community Planning and Development require the County to strengthen its policies and procedures to ensure that environmental reviews and environmental review exemptions are completed and documented before HOME funds are committed.

We recommend that the Director of HUD’s Newark, NJ, Office of Community Planning and Development require the County to strengthen its policies and procedures to ensure that activity address information in IDIS is current as required.

Submit all supporting documentation showing the eligibility and propriety of the $47,720 in unsupported matching contributions towards the ESG program or reimburse the ESG program from non-Federal funds.

Reconcile the data included in its CAPER with the data in its financial management system and correct any inaccurate information reported to HUD.

Develop and implement policies and procedures to ensure that its required matching contributions are properly supported.

Develop and implement policies and procedures to ensure that it reports data through its CAPERs using data from its own financial management system instead of data from HUD’s information system.

Update its records retention policy to meet HUD’s records retention requirements and notify its NSP subrecipients of the documentation retention requirements for the NSP grants.

Develop a retention strategy for its subrecipients to ensure that documentation is readily available for review.

Deobligate all obligations marked for deobligation during the departmentwide OOR, including as much as $11,463,971 in 189 program obligations and $13,640 in 10 administrative obligations marked for deobligation as of September 30, 2017.

Review the 1,110 identified inactive retained obligations with remaining balances totaling $229,327,332 and close out and deobligate amounts tied to obligations that are no longer valid or needed.

Close out and deobligate the remaining balances on 2,741 expired homeless assistance contracts of $159,437,069.

The County does not reimburse itself with program funds for the $452,444 in County bond proceeds originally budgeted for the Armstrong Park project and used to pay for flood protection improvements in the Graue Mill subdivision in Hinsdale.