We audited the City of New York’s Infrastructure Rehabilitation and Reconstruction of Public Facilities Program.  We selected this program for review because the City had allocated nearly $91 million to the program and disbursed more than $59.6 million as of October 31, 2017, and as part of our ongoing oversight of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Disaster Recovery programs.  Our objective was to determine...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Office of Inspector General (OIG) audited HUD’s travel and purchase card programs for fiscal year 2017 based on (1) our annual risk assessment of these programs and (2) our requirement under the Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2012 to periodically review government travel and purchase cards.  The most recent travel card risk assessment found that there was a moderate risk of...

We completed a risk assessment of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) grant closeout process as required by the Grants Oversight and New Efficiency (GONE) Act of 2016, Public Law 114-117.  Our objective was to determine whether an audit or review of HUD’s grant closeout process was warranted.  We found that a moderate risk was associated with HUD’s grant closeout process and recommend that a full audit be...

We reviewed the State of Florida’s Department of Economic Opportunity’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program.  We selected the State of Florida in accordance with our goal to review disaster funding and based on a congressional request for us to conduct disaster capacity reviews for recent disasters, including Hurricanes Hermine, Matthew, and Irma.  Our audit objective was to determine whether the...

We conducted this evaluation to determine the effectiveness of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) privacy program   We assessed the adequacy of agency strategies, plans, controls and practices at the enterprise and program levels.  We also examined the level of progress achieved since we last evaluated the program in 2014. We found that HUD had updated its privacy impact assessment processes, and took a...

In violation of the housing assistance payment contract’s conflict-of-interest requirements, the former executive director of the Housing Authority of the City of Beeville, TX, executed housing assistance payment contracts on behalf of the Authority with her brother and sister.  The former executive director did not fully disclose the conflicts-of-interest and had not sought a waiver from HUD’s Office of Public and Indian Housing until the...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General audited HUD because we learned while doing unrelated audit work that funds HUD was entitled to would be turned over to a State as unclaimed property if they were not claimed.  This information led us to conduct searches on several States’ unclaimed property websites and find thousands of unclaimed funds listed in HUD’s name or other similar names....

As part of our annual risk and internal planning process, we audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Block Grant Assistance’s (OBGA) Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Disaster Recovery program.  Our analysis noted that Congress had historically provided disaster funding through supplemental appropriations, yet OBGA had not created a formal codified program.  Instead, it had issued multiple...

On December 21, 2017, smoke spread from a malfunctioning air-handling unit on the 11th floor to parts of many other floors.  While a smoke detector in an air duct functioned properly and the fire department was notified, there was no audible alarm or public announcement to notify occupants to evacuate. People in one suite described the smoke as “heavy” and “thick.” HUD and the General Services Administration believe that the fire safety...

We performed the 22nd review of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s (LMDC) administration of the $2.783 billion in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Disaster Recovery funds awarded to the State of New York in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City.  The objective of the audit was to determine whether LMDC administered its Disaster Recovery-funded Lower...

On April 17, 2018, the Office of Program Enforcement issued a letter stating that it had reached a resolution under a Program Fraud Civil Remedies Act of 1986[1] case regarding Summit Bradford Apartments located in Tulsa, OK, following its review.  The Government alleged that the owner submitted 40 false claims under the Act.  The Office of Program Enforcement included with its letter the March 28, 2018, settlement agreement with BSR...

While performing audit work to determine whether the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Community Planning and Development (HUD CPD) monitored and ensured that grantees complied with the 24-month statutory expenditure requirement contained in the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013, we noted issues with (1) the recording of grants in the Line of Credit Control System (LOCCS) and (2) the grantees’ recording of...

This report presents the results of our audit of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) fiscal year 2017 compliance with the Improper Payments Elimination and Recovery Act of 2010 (IPERA). Fiscal year 2017 marked the fifth consecutive year in which we determined that HUD did not comply with IPERA.  We reviewed HUD’s compliance with the six IPERA requirements.  Of the six IPERA requirements, HUD did not comply...

We reviewed the Texas General Land Office in accordance with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General’s (HUD OIG) goal to review disaster funding and based on a congressional request for HUD OIG to conduct capacity reviews for Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria grantees.  Our audit objectives were to determine whether the State of Texas had the capacity to follow Federal procurement regulations when...

We conducted an attestation review of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Special Needs Assistance Continuum of Care Program, regarding reporting of drug control accounting and associated management assertions for fiscal year 2017.  The objective of our attestation review was to and to provide negative assurance on HUD’s drug control accounting reporting to the Office of National Drug Control Policy (...

We audited information system controls over the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) computing environment.  This review was conducted as part of our audit of HUD’s financial statements for fiscal year 2017 under the Chief Financial Officer’s Act of 1990.  Our objective was to assess general controls over HUD’s computing environment for compliance with HUD information technology policies and Federal information...

We audited general and application controls over selected Federal Housing Administration (FHA) information systems and the credit reform estimation and reestimation process as part of the internal control assessments required for the fiscal year 2017 financial statement audit under the Chief Financial Officer’s Act of 1990.  Our objective was to review the controls for compliance with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)...

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General (HUD OIG), has completed its annual risk assessment of HUD’s charge cards as required by the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2012, Public Law 112-194, and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Memorandum M-13-21.  Our objective was to analyze the risks of illegal, improper, or erroneous purchases in HUD’s fiscal year 2016 travel and purchase...

This briefing paper highlights challenges the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) faces in managing and improving its Information Technology (IT) program.  This document analyzed past HUD OIG and GAO IT related reports and recommendations to highlight key management challenges in HUD’s IT program. We are highlighting these challenges so HUD leadership is aware of and can be better prepared to address them. The OIG has...

HUD has a contract with Leidos Innovations Corporation for E-Discovery services using the E-Discovery Management System.  The process for collecting electronically stored information (ESI) and delivering it to customers has two major subprocesses: (1) an initial ESI collection and (2) a keyword search to refine the initial collection results.  OGC’s and Leidos’ collection of ESI does not meet customer demand because processing ESI...