The Department of Housing and Urban Development provided over $6.7 billion in fiscal 2008 to housing agencies to operate, modernize, and develop about 1.2 million public housing units, but key HUD oversight processes could be more focused on identifying potential inappropriate use or mismanagement of public housing funds, GAO has said.
After analyzing HUD financial data on about 3,300 housing agencies, comparing HUD’s oversight policies with program and agency objectives, and interviewing agency officials, GAO called on the department to develop mechanisms such as financial indicators to identify housing agencies that are at greater risk of inappropriately using or mismanaging public housing funds.
According to GAO-09-33, HUD does not systematically summarize audit findings to identify and understand emerging and persistent issues to better monitor housing agencies for inappropriate use and mismanagement of public housing funds.
The department uses the "public housing assessment system" to monitor and rate the overall condition and financial health of public housing agencies, but GAO said PHAS is not intended to identify inappropriate uses of public housing funds and is limited in its ability to detect potential mismanagement.
GAO further cited problems with agencies that received passing PHAS scores, such as bank overdrafts.
It called on HUD to regularly summarize and systematically evaluate the results of inspector general and single audits of public housing agencies to allow program managers to identify and understand problems of potential inappropriate use and mismanagement of public housing funds, identify emerging issues, and evaluate overall monitoring and oversight processes.
