We recommend that Director of the Houston Office of Public Housing require the Authority to update and implement its policies and procedures, including creating a policy for recording expenses, a cost allocation plan, and a travel policy, to ensure that the Authority appropriately pays and accurately reports its costs.

We recommend that the Director of the Houston Office of Public Housing require the Authority’s new board to complete HUD’s “Lead the Way” online training and Texas’ Open Meetings Act training.

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.

Establish and implement a process to ensure that ONAP’s policies and procedures are effective. This process should address the identification of presidentially declared disaster areas and the requirement to contact disaster-affected housing entities. 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.

Improve the Office of Public Housing’s procedures with written guidance to ensure that its staff formally tracks outreach to PHAs.

Ensure that OCFO has the data it needs to record a reasonable PIH prepayment estimate related to supplemental pandemic funding in fiscal year 2021 and beyond if additional funding is provided.

Require the Authority to reimburse the six tenants who overpaid rent totaling $1,550 using non-Federal funds.

Require the Authority to develop and implement internal control procedures that support its policy and ensure a proper tenant selection process when selecting tenants for housing.

Ensure that the Authority follows all applicable HUD requirements related to accessing, use, and safeguarding credentials of HUD systems.

Conduct a nationwide assessment of the impact of portability and determine whether technical assistance is necessary for certain public housing agencies. Consider seeking input from public housing agencies and industry groups to evaluate the potential impact of portability and (1) determine whether improvements to the portability aspect of the program are warranted, and (2) if deemed warranted, determine how the improvements will be implemented for public housing agencies portable vouchers (both port-in and port-out).

Pursue collection or recapture $248,514 ($115,335 $133,179) from the applicable public housing agencies for the overpayment of category 2b portability set-aside funds and special administrative fees cited in this finding.

Distribute $35,189 to the applicable public housing agencies for the underpayment of special administrative fees for portability cited in this finding.

Review the calculations and distributions of funds for the 2019 category 2b portability set-aside and special administrative fees for portability to ensure that the spreadsheet errors did not carry forward from the previous calculations.

Request indemnification for the 7 of the 11 loans that had material underwriting deficiencies (appendix D). The unpaid balance for these loans is $1.3 million and the estimated potential loss to HUD is $607,598.

Require the lender to develop and implement enhanced policies and procedures to ensure electronic signatures from borrowers are properly supported.

Require the lender to fully implement its quality control plan with respect to reverifications and provide HUD with periodic reports for 12 months to ensure that it conducts its quality control reviews in accordance with the requirements.

Put $256,824 to better use by cancelling the project-based voucher housing assistance payments contract resulting from the RAD conversion. The Authority should work with HUD and the owner to protect the tenancy of the affected tenants at the time of contract cancellation.