We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement require the Commission to develop an internal agency intake training guide, distribute it to all agency housing staff members, and ensure that all intake staff members participate in HUD-approved training related to intake.

We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement require the Commission to implement a record retention policy to ensure that decisions on inquiries are sufficiently supported.

We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement require the Commission to implement a plan to ensure that it has sufficient staff to meet its obligations under FHAP cooperative agreement.

We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Enforcement require the Commission to implement a system to better track the intake and processing of potential fair housing inquiries.

Determine whether the funds that were drawn in error need to be repaid to HUD and whether other remediation actions are appropriate.

We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Single Family Housing update policies and procedures regarding discrimination complaints to ensure consistency among customer service representatives in rerouting these complaints to FHEO.

We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Single Family Housing ensure that the FHA Resource Center updates its training program to ensure that refresher training on housing discrimination is regularly provided to staff (such as monthly, quarterly, semiannually, etc.).

We recommend that the Director of Disaster Recovery collect and record the number of days that it or other entities take to complete each milestone in the grant process.

We recommend that the Director of Disaster Recovery establish timing benchmarks for the milestones at each significant step in the allocation and award process based on actual data accumulated for the various grants.

We recommend that the Director of Disaster Recovery take steps to ensure that the milestone point of allocation is formally defined and documented, to allow for accurate tracking of compliance with requirements.

Develop a plan and a timeline that ensures all due and payable partial claims are transferred to the FOC, and subsequently processed by the FOC.

Develop and implement procedures to i) monitor the transfer of due and payable partial claims from NSC to the FOC for collection, ii) determine the financial statement impact of not referring due and payable partial claims to the FOC, and iii) decide when FHA will record a reclassification entry to accounts receivable for those due and payable partial claims that are not transferred to the FOC timely.

Consider accounting implications to the gross HECM loans receivable balance for the $20 million lost in security interests.

Record an adjusting entry to remove the duplicate $44 million from the gross HECM loans receivable balance as of September 30, 2023.

Identify and remove all duplicate transactions from the accounting module and prevent future occurrences.

Develop and enhance training for servicing the HECM portfolio.

Develop corrective procedures to bring the HECM portfolio servicing current, initiate collection proceedings for due and payable loans, redeem the tax certificates for properties for which FHA lost its security interest, and implement a solution to monitor tax payments to prevent tax delinquencies and avoid FHA’s risk of loss in loan security interest.

We recommend that the Deputy Assistant Secretary instruct PRDOH to improve fraud awareness initiatives, such as participating in organized antifraud conferences, reviewing the OIG’s Special Fraud Alerts, Bulletins, and Other Guidance, and attending fraud risk training tailored to the program’s fraud risk profile (including subrecipients).

We recommend that the Director, Office of Disaster Recovery, for future grants, develop and implement procedures to ensure that all applicable requirements for preventing any duplication of benefits are included in the adequacy criteria, grantee certifications, and HUD review checklists supporting the certification.

Consider grantee feedback on the challenges they faced as part of ONAP’s planning for technical assistance and training of ONAP COVID-19 recovery program grantees.