Issa announces investigation into housing program

A yearlong investigation by the Post found that more than nearly 700 projects receiving $400 million in grants have stalled or been otherwise abandoned. Those projects also haven’t undergone sufficient federal and local agency oversight and are entangled with legal impediments that prevent recouping money from failed projects.  

“If these allegations are accurate, they are very troubling,” Cummings wrote. 

Senate Banking Chairman Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) and ranking member Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) also their committee will look into the allegations. 

“We are deeply concerned by these reports, particularly at a time when so many Americans are in need of affordable housing,” they said in a joint statement on Monday. 

The newspaper examined every major project currently funded under the HUD program — a database of 5,100 projects worth $3.2 billion — examining more than 600 satellite images and collecting information from 165 housing agencies nationwide.

The Post investigation found that local housing agencies received funding with few rules to follow, protections or even a way to track projects designed to provide affordable housing to the working poor.      

A federal audit of the Philadelphia Housing Authority released on Tuesday shows that millions in funds from the 2009 economic stimulus were improperly used and lacked any documentation to determine how the money was spent.  

The Office of Inspector General for HUD determined that the authority failed to provide adequate documentation supporting the “validity, accuracy, necessity and reasonableness of almost $1 million in funds provided by the stimulus” to rehabilitate its low-income housing projects, according to the report. 

The authority received $31.5 million in stimulus formula grant funds and spent $27.4 million between March 2009 and June 2010, which were designated for the rehabilitation of 340 of the authority’s portfolio of approximately 7,300 scattered-site units.