Develop and implement a policy that clearly defines roles and responsibilities for Office of Multifamily Housing Programs’ staff for EBLL-related requirements, including the oversight of property owners’ compliance with these requirements.

Establish processes to track reported EBLLs for the Office of Multifamily Housing Programs to easily identify the status of owners’ remediation efforts for units that were the source of the confirmed EBLL.

Develop and implement uniform procedures for the FSM desk monitoring review, including a second level review for the FSM monitoring reviews and process for each inspection type.

Update the FSM monitoring plan and FSM qualitative monitoring database to: (a) clearly define the monitoring questions, (b) include a section for Q7 New Not Ready to Show (NRTS) properties, (c) define which routine inspection reports will be reviewed to conduct the routine inspection monitoring reviews and (d) develop a monitoring question to evaluate photo date stamps.

Ensure that program officials periodically provide all FSM CORs and staff involved in the monitoring process uniform property inspection training.

Update HUD Handbook 1900.40, Do Not Pay policy, to clearly define the responsibilities for all parties and align it with current laws, processes, and procedures. This should include defining responsibilities for preaward and prepayment verification, and developing a process and governance structure to ensure that preaward and prepayment verification are consistently performed across HUD’s programs.

Status

HUD has until August 25, 2025 to provide its corrective action plan to OIG for review.

Analysis

Updating the HUD Handbook 1900.40 will define responsible parties for ensuring compliance with the Do Not Pay Initiative (DNP).    

The implementation of this recommendation will result in consistent use of DNP, allowing for instant verification of eligibility across the billions in payments that HUD processes.

Develop a standard operating procedure to ensure that the OCFO is 1) monitoring the DNP Computer Matching agreement to ensure continuity, 2) reporting accurately on its DNP matching, and 3) working with program offices to adjudicate any payments that are identified as potentially improper during the computer matching process.

Work with Multifamily Housing to investigate the 11 of 24 entities with expired SAM.gov registrations to determine if those entities should have received payments totaling $212,208,450 and perform the required follow-up actions once a determination is made.

Deobligate the 835 administrative obligations totaling $38,525,836.88 identified for deobligation during the fiscal year 2024 OOR that had not been deobligated as of February 28, 2025.

Deobligate the 101 program obligations totaling $1,967,991.45 identified for deobligation during the fiscal year 2024 OOR that had not been deobligated as of February 28, 2025.

More clearly define successful prepurchase and postpurchase homeownership counseling outcomes and use these definitions to help establish performance metrics and benchmarks for HUD’s Office of Housing Counseling and HUD-approved housing counseling agencies. This should include the types of successful outcomes under the Homeownership Initiative Grant, as well as other positive outcomes for clients that do not involve immediate homeownership.

Implement routine client outcome data analysis to identify trends, quantify performance metrics and benchmarks, and measure the impact of prepurchase and postpurchase counseling on advancing homeownership. This should include routine analysis that HUD’s Office of Housing Counseling can implement based on data collected as well as continuing to pursue an updated housing counseling data system to help overcome client outcome data limitations.

Enhance monitoring of HUD-approved housing counseling agencies’ performance, to include progress toward the established performance metrics and benchmarks.

Collaborate with ONDCP to determine the necessary adjustments to the CoC reporting methodology that ensures HUD reports annual numeric targets and actuals to ONDCP by the required November 1 due date.

Collaborate with ONDCP to determine the necessary adjustments to the RHP reporting methodology that ensures HUD reports numeric targets to ONDCP by the required November 1 due date.

Develop and execute a written agreement with ONDCP on the reporting methodology for the CoC annual numeric targets and actuals that would meet future reporting requirements and comply with the Strategy and timeframe for implementation.

Develop and execute a written agreement with ONDCP on the use of reporting annual numeric targets for the RHP performance measures that would meet future reporting requirements and comply with the Strategy and timeframe for implementation.

Establish and implement formal policies and procedures that include (1) the ONDCP reporting process between HUD’s OCFO and CPD, (2) the process for reporting to ONDCP, (3) references to any written agreements between HUD and ONDCP, and (4) a requirement for periodic reviews of these written agreements to address any changes in administration, roles, responsibilities, reporting programs, reporting requirements, and reporting methodologies.

We recommend that HUD’s General Deputy Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development implement training on civil rights monitoring reviews. Additionally, CPD should ensure that training on civil rights monitoring reviews is regularly provided to CPD staff.

We recommend that HUD’s General Deputy Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development develop guidance clarifying the use of the exhibit for on-site, hybrid, and remote monitoring to ensure a full review of grantees’ compliance with civil rights requirements, and incorporate this guidance into the training developed as a result of recommendation 1A.