Finding Text
2024-001 – Eligibility for Housing Assistance
Significant Deficiency
Criteria: A person eligible for assistance under this program means a person with HIV or AIDS who is a low-income individual and the person’s family, including persons important to their care and well-being, as defined in 24 CFR 574.3. The eligibility of those tenants who were admitted to the program should be determined by (1) obtaining applications that contain all the information needed to determine eligibility, including diagnosis, documentation of housing need, income, rent and order of selection; and (2) obtaining third-party verifications or documentation of expected income, assets, unusual medical expenses, and any other pertinent information.
Condition: During the testing of tenant files, certain documentation deficiencies were noted as summarized below:
1 – Incorrect Rental Calculation on Participant #10 (Criteria 1)
1 – Incorrect amount of support provided to Participant #10, and (Criteria 1)
1 – Missing documentation of lease contract for Participant #6 (Criteria 2)
Cause: WNCAP personnel miscalculated Participant #10's income, which resulted in the incorrect amount of support being provided. The landlord for Participant #6 refused to provide the lease agreement.
Effect: Compliance with eligibility could not be determined for some sampled tenants. Therefore, some ineligible individuals may have received assistance under the program. Some individuals received the incorrect amount of support.
Questioned Costs: Undeterminable
Context: During the year, 85 unique clients were served. We sampled 20 tenant files for multiple compliance requirements.
Identification of a Repeat Finding: Criteria 2 is a repeat finding from the immediate previous audit, 2023-001.
Recommendation: Management should implement internal control procedures to ensure that all required documentation for determining eligibility is obtained and included in each tenant file. Management should also ensure that eligibility for assistance is properly calculated.
Management’s View: We agree with this finding and have outlined our response in our Corrective Action Plan.