We audited the Inglewood Housing Authority (Authority) based upon issues with participant eligibility identified during our previous review of the financial operations of the Authority’s Housing Choice Voucher program, audit report 2016-LA-1013.  Our audit objective was to determine whether the Authority ensured that participants were eligible to receive housing assistance in accordance with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rules and requirements.

The Authority generally obtained and maintained required documentation to support eligibility and correctly calculated housing assistance payments with few deficiencies in compliance with HUD rules and requirements.  However, there were minor deficiencies that the Authority should address to minimize potential issues.  These deficiencies included not always using HUD’s Enterprise Income Verification (EIV) system to verify employment and income and identify possible subsidy payment errors, and calculation errors that affected participants’ housing assistance.  These conditions occurred because the Authority lacked adequate written policies and procedures to ensure compliance with HUD rules and requirements.  After we completed our fieldwork, the Authority is taking corrective actions to address the deficiencies identified in this report.

We recommend that the Director of HUD’s Los Angeles Office of Public Housing require the Authority to (1) reimburse its program $648 from non-Federal funds and use its internal control procedures to ensure that housing assistance payments are correctly calculated during the certification process to ensure that the overpayment of program funds is appropriately used for future payments, (2) reimburse the participants $84 from non-Federal funds for the underpayment of housing assistance, (3) develop and implement an internal policy and procedure related to interim certifications to ensure that it obtains EIV reports and maintains those reports in participant files, and (4) develop and implement controls to minimize instances of overpayment and underpayment of housing assistance.