We recommend that the Director of the Houston Office of Public Housing require the Authority’s new board to review the board minutes during our audit period, determine which board decisions were invalid, and take action to address the invalid decisions.

We recommend that the Director of the Houston Office of Public Housing require the Authority’s new board to revise its bylaws to agree with the Texas Open Meetings Act.

Establish and implement a plan to assist public housing agencies in optimizing leasing potential to maximize the number of assisted families and prevent additional vouchers from becoming unfunded. The plan should include but not be limited to (1) addressing the circumstances that prevent public housing agencies from leasing vouchers and assessing whether legislative, policy, or funding changes are needed to optimize voucher use and (2) establishing timeframes to lease vouchers for those public housing agencies that can lease vouchers and determining appropriate corrective actions for those public housing agencies that do not increase their leasing to prevent additional vouchers from becoming unfunded.

Establish and implement a plan for the unused and unfunded vouchers to mitigate or prevent additional vouchers from becoming unused and unfunded […]

Corrective Action Taken

HUD established and implemented a plan for the unused and unfunded vouchers, aiming to mitigate or prevent additional vouchers from becoming unused and unfunded. PIH's plan included the following, among other actions:

• Determining the scope of HUD's statutory and regulatory authority to offset and reallocate vouchers.
• Issuing Office of Public and Indian Housing Notice 2020-29, titled Guidance for Running an Optimized Housing Choice Voucher Program.
• Continuing the work of HUD's landlord taskforce, engaging in listening sessions with major PHA industry groups, and conducting outreach to increase landlord participation in the HCV Program.
• Developing research by HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research on the best methods for adjusting fair market rents and addressing specific challenges in local communities to increase utilization in the HCV Program.

Standardize position descriptions and job analyses for mission-critical occupations, high-risk occupations, and positions with high-volume staffing needs.

Develop and share best practices with HUD’s program offices on how hiring managers can execute hiring process responsibilities to meet timeliness goals.

Determine the cause for the variations in the timeliness of the preemployment and security checks step in FY 2017, 2018, and 2019 and develop appropriate process improvements.

Develop and document comprehensive reference documents on the hiring processes, procedures, roles, and responsibilities.

Develop and implement regular training for process owners on the hiring process.

Create and implement a knowledge management strategy, such as developing standard operating procedures, reference sheets, and program office fact sheets.

Corrective Action Taken

OCHCO developed and implemented client profiles for each HUD program office to address knowledge loss and the need for offices to explain or reexplain their mission and functions. The profiles will serve as a central repository to learn about the various programs and missions of HUD and will allow OCHCO staff, other key HUD program office staff, and HUD’s service provider staff to view critical information for each HUD program office.

Conduct a feasibility study for an automated POL.

Develop and implement time-to-hire goals that account for each hiring process step.

Develop and document methodologies on how OCHCO calculates hiring metrics to ensure that its hiring metrics and hiring goals align across all of its data sources, including the POL, the human capital dashboard, and the HCOP.

Track the quality of candidates as measured by the hiring officials.

Track the number of recruit attempts that result in a selection, the number of recruit attempts that result in a successful hire, and the number of positions that are reposted due to unsuccessful first recruit attempts.

Develop a comprehensive process to ensure that complaints received by HUD’s Multifamily Housing Clearinghouse are resolved in a timely manner.

Status

October 2023, the Office of Multifamily Housing Programs reported that HUD was transitioning the Multifamily Clearinghouse responsibilities to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Resource Center. The Office stated that it had requested IT Technology Fund funding for FY 2024 for system enhancements to coordinate tenant complaints throughout Multifamily Housing including Multifamily field staff and the Multifamily Clearinghouse Call Center.

Analysis

In June 2024, the Office reported that because the FY 2024 funding was not approved by Congress, it will use the FHA Resource Center and its system that will allow for tracking and monitoring of customer calls. In addition, the Office will request assistance from its Project Based Contract Administrators to use a standard, Multifamily-wide reporting format to standardize and aggregate tenant complaints.

Develop agencywide policies and procedures for the intake, monitoring, and tracking of health and safety complaints.

Status

October 2023, the Office of Multifamily Housing Programs reported that HUD was transitioning the Multifamily Clearinghouse responsibilities to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Resource Center. The Office stated that it had requested IT Technology Fund funding for FY 2024 for system enhancements to coordinate tenant complaints throughout Multifamily Housing including Multifamily field staff and the Multifamily Clearinghouse Call Center.

Analysis

In June 2024, the Office reported that because the FY 2024 funding was not approved by Congress, it will use the FHA Resource Center and its system that will allow for tracking and monitoring of customer calls. In addition, the Office will request assistance from its Project Based Contract Administrators to use a standard, Multifamily-wide reporting format to standardize and aggregate tenant complaints.

Develop an automated real-time system for HUD and PBCA staff to use to receive, track, and resolve health and safety issues.

Revise the annual contributions contract to more clearly define the required treatment of health and safety issues, to include: • Specific timeliness requirements for resolving life-threatening and non-life-threatening health and safety issues. • Notification that HUD will actively monitor the status of complaints and become involved in resolution if necessary. • Requirement that PBCAs will immediately contact HUD staff if a property has a life-threatening or non-life-threatening health and safety issue and report when the issue is resolved. • Requirement that the projects’ property management will immediately contact PBCA staff if a property has a life-threatening or non-life-threatening health and safety issue and report when the issue is resolved.

Establish and implement a process to ensure that CPD’s supervisory controls are effective related to its staff’s requirement to contact grantees following a disaster. This process should also integrate with other HUD program offices as appropriate to improve consistency with HUD’s overall disaster response and to ensure the effectiveness of disaster controls.