The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Office of Inspector General audited the Housing Choice Voucher program of the Des Moines Municipal Housing Agency (Agency) to determine whether the Agency (1) properly considered family composition and reasonable accommodation requests when applying payment standards and (2) took appropriate action when the tenants' files had indications of unreported income. We found that the Agency allowed 59 of the 148 households we reviewed to have units that were larger than permitted by regular subsidy standards. The Agency also improperly processed 16 of the households we reviewed with indications of unreported income.

We recommend that HUD require the Agency to reimburse its program more than $78,000 from administrative fee reserves and pursue collection of nearly $21,000 from tenants with unreported income. We also recommend that HUD require the Agency to develop and implement procedures and controls to ensure that each tenant receives the proper voucher size and to ensure the proper correction for unreported income.