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Report Fraud, Waste and Abuse
May 14, 2008
  • Public and Indian Housing
2008-AT-0003
ig0840003.pdf

As part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of the Inspector General's (OIG) strategic plan, we audited HUD's controls over the physical condition of Section 8 housing stock for the Housing Choice Voucher program. Our objective was to determine whether HUD had adequate controls to ensure that its Section 8 housing stock was in material compliance with housing quality standards.

We found that HUD did not have adequate controls to ensure that its Section 8 housing stock was in material compliance with housing quality standards. This condition occurred because HUD had not fully implemented its Section 8 Management Assessment Program. As a result, it could not ensure that the primary mission of the Section 8 program, paying rental subsidies so that eligible families can afford decent, safe, and sanitary housing, was met. In addition, HUD's lack of knowledge regarding the condition of its Section 8 housing stock resulted in inflated performance ratings for public housing agencies administering the program. Consequently, HUD routinely rated some agencies as being high performers when a significant percentage of the units they administered were in material noncompliance with housing quality standards. HUD was revising its Section 8 regulations. These revisions included developing a physical inspection system to help ensure that HUD's Section 8 housing stock is in material compliance with housing quality standards.

Our recommendations included completion of the departmental clearance process of the proposed revised Section 8 regulations by the end of fiscal year 2008, allowing the proposed revisions to Section 8 Management Assessment Program and housing quality standards to go through the proper process and carefully consider all questions and comments made by the affected parties (HUD Office of Public and Indian Housing staff, tenants, landlords, Real Estate Assessment Center, HUD OIG, etc.) before publishing the final rule, and fully developing and implementing a physical inspection system for the tenant-based Housing Choice Voucher program within three years of the issue date of this report.