OIG Issues Annual Report on HUD’s Top Management Challenges for 2019

Earlier this fall, HUD’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued its annual report on the top management challenges facing HUD in 2019. It identified six specific issues that, according to the report, “impact HUD’s ability to meet the needs of its beneficiaries and protect taxpayer dollars.” The six management challenges identified by the OIG are:

• Ensuring the availability of affordable housing that is decent, safe, sanitary, and in good repair;
• Protecting the Federal Housing Administration’s mortgage insurance funds;
• Providing adequate monitoring and oversight of its operations and program participants;
• Administering disaster recovery assistance;
• Modernizing technology and the management and oversight of information technology; and
• Instituting sound financial management governance, internal controls, and systems.

The OIG report finds that HUD’s strategies for addressing the shortage of affordable housing have not been successful, considering that rents are increasingly unaffordable for the lowest income people and that affordability issues are increasingly affecting higher-earning households. In addition, according to the OIG, HUD has systematically failed to ensure proper reporting and mitigation of unsafe environmental conditions impacting residents in affordable housing units. The report cites cases of lead contamination involving children and the agency’s inaction in determining the extent to which residents are impacted by environmental contaminants from EPA-designated Superfund sites, an issue that has been on the agency’s radar since the EPA published a report in 2016.

You can find the report by clicking here.