Finding 1236186 (2025-004)

Material Weakness Repeat Finding
Requirement
E
Questioned Costs
-
Year
2025
Accepted
2026-09-23

AI Summary

  • Core Issue: Incomplete documentation of tenant income eligibility for the Housing Choice Voucher Program.
  • Impacted Requirements: Missing utility allowance calculations and annual re-examinations for several tenants.
  • Recommended Follow-Up: Focus on recruiting and training staff, and streamline processes to ensure compliance with HUD requirements.

Finding Text

Criteria As a condition of admission or continued occupancy, require the tenant and other family members to provide necessary information, documentation, and releases for the Authority to verify income eligibility (24 CFR sections 5.230, 5.609, and 982.516). Condition Incomplete documentation of tenant’s income eligibility for participation in the Housing Choice Voucher Program. During the sampling of forty (40) tenant files we noted: (A) nine (9) did not include utility allowance calculation that agreed to the HUD form 50058; (B) four (4) files did not have 50058s that tied to the HAP register for the period as management was unable to locate documentation. Additionally, five (5) tenants were not re-examined and re-certified annually. Context The Authority manages over 600 Housing Choice Vouchers and 600 Port-In Voucher during the year. We sampled 40 tenant files for multiple compliance requirements. Cause The failure to meet compliance requirements noted above can be attributed to a combination of factors, including major staff turnover, which led to a loss of institutional knowledge and expertise critical for the preparation and maintain the required documentation in tenant files. Effect Compliance with income limits and eligibility could not be demonstrated for sampled tenants. Therefore, ineligible individuals may be receiving HAP assistance and/or HAP is being incorrectly calculated based on unverified incomes. Recommendations It is recommended that the Authority: (1) Prioritize the recruitment and training of new staff to fill critical roles, ensuring they are well-versed in HUD requirements and (2) Revise and streamline internal processes to improve efficiency and reliability in meeting HUD's requirements for determining tenant eligibility. Questioned Costs The exact monetary impact needs further investigation to determine the amount for the period of non-compliance. Management Views Management agrees with this finding and have outlined a plan of action in the Corrective Action Plan.

Corrective Action Plan

Forty (40) tenant files sampled by the auditors, seven (9) files did not have utility allowance calculation that agreed to the HUD form 50058; four (4) files did not have tied to the HAP register for the period as management was unable to locate documentation. Additionally, five (4) tenants were not reexamined and re-certified annually. Based upon staffing issues and staff s inability to learn the HUD regulations with Annual Reexaminations and Administrative Plan requirements between 2023 - 2025, Annual Reexaminations were getting further and further behind. RHA had hired independent contractors back in 2025 to assist RHA catch up but that did not work out. After the conversion of the software in June 2024 to Scott Accounting and Computer Software (SACS) from YARDI, most of the HAP errors came from old PIC files that were pulled over from PIC because the current staff were not double data entering the AR s and IR s into both programs for the few months prior to submission. This caused the HAP issues. All files have been reviewed the past 1.5 years and all HAP has been corrected to landlords based off those errors. Prior staff did not put a checkmark in the box to print reports, which forced the software to put the reports into a Document Management storage system for each tenant. The CEO worked with the software vendor to force the pushing of all reports associated with the AR, IR, MI, PMI, Transfers, MO and PMO to go into Document Management system and store. All FY2024 and FY2025 files are being completed in FY2026 and will be done by December 2026. The CEO and COO are reviewing all files by HCV staff and ensuring that a Compliance Checklist is completed on each file and once the file is certified for its AR, the file automatically goes into Document Management. The 50058 form is reviewed to ensure that the Utility Allowance on the form is also what is pulled onto the 52667 Utility Allowance Schedule form. All AR supporting documents are also monitored and ensured that they scanned into the Document Management system under the tenant folder for that Transaction Type. Beginning January 2027, RHA will be searching for a Compliance Officer staff person to go through files each month (10% of each Program Specialist s case load for prior months Annual Reexams or other types of transactions that occurred that prior month)

Categories

Eligibility HUD Housing Programs

Other Findings in this Audit

  • 1236184 2025-002
    Material Weakness Repeat
  • 1236185 2025-003
    Material Weakness Repeat

Programs in Audit

ALN Program Name Expenditures
14.871 SECTION 8 HOUSING CHOICE VOUCHERS $12.17M
14.879 MAINSTREAM VOUCHERS $1.06M