Finding Text
2024-001 Federal Program: COVID-19 - Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA)
Assistance Listing Number: 21.023
Federal Awarding Agency: United States Department of the Treasury
Compliance Requirement: Allowable Costs
Criteria: 2 CFR 200.403 establishes standards for determining costs allowable for federal awards. Management is responsible for ensuring that recipients of Emergency Rental Assistance funds are eligible, and that their benefit amounts are calculated accurately.
Condition: For one payment selected for testing, the Authority calculated the eligible benefit amount incorrectly.
Cause: A secondary review was performed of the benefit calculation, but the review did not detect the error.
Effect: One beneficiary received more from ERA funds than they were eligible to receive.
Questioned costs: The overpayment identified was $350.
Context: We tested a sample of 40 individuals that received payments under the program totaling $170,416 of disbursements out of 15,335 total recipients, with total payments of $75,066,010 during 2024. In our testing we identified that one individual selected in our sample was paid $350 more than their documented eligible rent and utility expenses under the program, due to an error in the calculation of the eligible benefit amount. Our sampling methodology is not considered statistically valid.
Recommendations: We recommend that the Authority implement additional procedures to ensure that errors in benefit calculations are detected and corrected in a timely manner.
Authority’s Response: We agree that the amount paid was an error. As the ERA program ends in 2025, we are working to review all activity, identify errors, and recover amounts paid in error where possible.