We recommend that the Deputy Secretary Develop and execute a detailed plan and timeline for both testing and reporting estimates of improper payments in the PIH-TBRA and PBRA programs in compliance with Federal law and OMB guidance.

Status

In response to the Management Alert, the Deputy Secretary stated that she would provide a plan in 30 days. On April 10, 2024, the Chief Financial Officer, Assistant Secretary for Housing, and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing (PIH) stated their respective executives had been working together to develop a plan to accelerate HUD’s ability to produce statistically valid estimates. With respect to PBRA, HUD plans to use ongoing data collection for fiscal year (FY) 2023 tier 1 and tier 2 payments to develop a statistical estimate in FY 2024.

However, our ongoing Payment Integrity Information Act audit has determined that neither program produced a compliant estimate in fiscal year 2024. For multifamily-PBRA, HUD made some progress and reported an estimate that captured part of the payment cycle; however, the estimate did not include testing to ensure that housing assistance payments from contract administrators to owners were calculated correctly and supported by tenant-level documentation. The PIH-TBRA program did not produce an estimate at all, noting that IT system modernization must occur first. However, PIH has not yet provided a plan that indicates how the system upgrades will address this issue or a timeline for implementation. As of January 31, 2025, a detailed plan or timeline has not been provided.

Analysis

As of January 31, 2025, HUD has not provided a detailed plan or timeline for OIG review. It remains unclear how HUD will produce a complete estimate of the PBRA programs in future years, and when it will be able to produce an estimate for PIH-TBRA.

For HUD to close this recommendation, it must finish testing the full life cycle of payments in these programs and publicly report estimates of the improper payments in them. Merely producing a plan with future action target dates is not sufficient to meet the spirit of this recommendation.

PBRA and PIH-TBRA are the two largest program expenditures in HUD's portfolio, totaling $50 billion in FY 24, or 62.4 percent of HUD's total expenditures. HUD has been challenged with developing a compliant sampling methodology that can test the full payment cycle and that can be executed within the required timeframes. To fully address this recommendation, the sampling methodology should test the full payment cycle, and the associated sample testing and statistical estimation must be completed in time to be included in the Annual Financial Report.

Implementation of this recommendation will result in HUD better-safeguarding taxpayer dollars and decrease improper payments.

Implement a transparent process for reviewing open-ended exit survey results and sharing those results with ODEEO, as appropriate, and program offices while still protecting former employees’ confidentiality.

Assess what departing employees mean when they indicate that organizational culture is a motivation for leaving HUD.

Develop guidance for the program offices to identify the causes behind high attrition rates in governmentwide high-risk MCOs and field offices in large cities.

Develop guidance for program offices to develop program office-specific action plans to address any causes found for high attrition rates in governmentwide high-risk MCOs and field offices in large cities.

Create a single, unified agency-specific MCO list updated to reflect current progress toward closing skills gaps.

The OIG has determined that the contents of this recommendation would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its distribution to selected officials.

The OIG has determined that the contents of this recommendation would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its distribution to selected officials.

The OIG has determined that the contents of this recommendation would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its distribution to selected officials.

The OIG has determined that the contents of this recommendation would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its distribution to selected officials.

The OIG has determined that the contents of this recommendation would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its distribution to selected officials.

The OIG has determined that the contents of this recommendation would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its distribution to selected officials.

We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Single Family Housing update policies and procedures regarding discrimination complaints to ensure consistency among customer service representatives in rerouting these complaints to FHEO.

We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Single Family Housing ensure that the FHA Resource Center updates its training program to ensure that refresher training on housing discrimination is regularly provided to staff (such as monthly, quarterly, semiannually, etc.).

We recommend that the Director of Disaster Recovery collect and record the number of days that it or other entities take to complete each milestone in the grant process.

We recommend that the Director of Disaster Recovery establish timing benchmarks for the milestones at each significant step in the allocation and award process based on actual data accumulated for the various grants.

We recommend that the Director of Disaster Recovery take steps to ensure that the milestone point of allocation is formally defined and documented, to allow for accurate tracking of compliance with requirements.

Develop a plan and a timeline that ensures all due and payable partial claims are transferred to the FOC, and subsequently processed by the FOC.

Develop and implement procedures to i) monitor the transfer of due and payable partial claims from NSC to the FOC for collection, ii) determine the financial statement impact of not referring due and payable partial claims to the FOC, and iii) decide when FHA will record a reclassification entry to accounts receivable for those due and payable partial claims that are not transferred to the FOC timely.

Consider accounting implications to the gross HECM loans receivable balance for the $20 million lost in security interests.