Finding Text
Criteria: Under Tenant Application, Eligibility, and Recertification requirements from HUD, management is required to submit monthly HAP vouchers by the tenth day of preceding month for which the request is being made.
Condition: Management has been unable to submit monthly HAP vouchers by the required timeline due to significant contract rent increases at the Entity during the year. This required manual review of the HAP vouchers from HUD to be complete prior to being able to submit future HAP vouchers. The following Entity had late HAP vouchers during the year ended June 30, 2024: ALAW Ogden Gardens, Inc. – 10 vouchers late.
Cause: Management could not submit HAP vouchers after the contract rent increases since the HAP vouchers required a manual review from HUD. Once the HAP voucher was manually reviewed by HUD, management could begin submitting the previously missed monthly HAP vouchers.
Effect or potential effect: A delay in submitting monthly HAP vouchers prevents the Entity from being in compliance with the requirements from HUD.
Recommendation: Management should communicate with HUD to determine a plan to get the monthly HAP voucher submissions current.
Questioned costs: None identified.
Views of responsible officials: For a period of 8 years, management had not sought budget-based rent increases (BBRI) for the Section 811 properties. This caused the properties to not have sufficient cash to operate at breakeven basis. Management addressed the systemic issues that prevented properties from receiving these important increases. For FY24, Management received substantial rent increases from HUD. Because of the percentage increase in this one year, HUD practices require that vouchers need to be reviewed by hand and HUD will only take vouchers one month at a time. This resulted in the late vouchers that you see above. Because we sought a regular annual BBRI in FY25, the late vouchering will not happen again.