The Department of Housing and Urban Development
inspector general has said allegations that the Office
of Healthy Homes and Lead Hazard Control inappropriately
awarded grants for fiscal 2004 have “merit.”
The IG said in a preliminary report that it was
auditing the healthy homes office in response to a
number of congressional inquiries and complaints and
that it identified errors in the award process for all
seven of the grant applications it reviewed.
Four applicants either received $6,323,636 in grants
they were not entitled to or lost an award they should
have gotten partly because the department established
a September 30 deadline to process and award the grants
without having an effective process in place, according
to the IG.
It also said the office and its contractor “did not
always follow established procedures in evaluating and
scoring” applications – and that the office’s decision
to restrict its search for a contractor under HUD’s
accelerated small business and 8-a firm contracting
process “severely limited the pool of qualified contractors.”
“We found the contractor, whom the Office of Healthy Homes
selected to evaluate and rate the grant applications, made
a number of significant errors in processing the
applications which compromised the integrity of the
award process,” according to the IG.
It said that its survey results throw into question
whether the remaining fiscal 2004 grants were awarded
properly and that HUD “needs to take immediate action”
to ensure that the 2005 award process follows the
department’s funding requirements and grant processing
procedures.
