In October 1998, President Bill Clinton signed into law legislation requiring public housing tenants to spend eight hours per month on "community service" activities or participate in "self-sufficiency programs" such as job training.
But 17 years later, according to an audit released Wednesday, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is doing a poor job at monitoring compliance with program rules, approved in negotiations between the Democratic White House and congressional Republicans in the 1990s.
According to the audit, conducted by HUD's Office of Inspector General, HUD subsidized housing for 106,000 units occupied by tenants who were not in compliance with agency regulations for the "community services and self-sufficiency program," or CSSR.
Of the nearly 740,000 adult tenants living in those units, "HUD's system contained incorrect CSSR status codes for 201,000 tenants," according to the inspector general.
The deficiency occurred because HUD lacked "adequate controls to monitor compliance with CSSR," the inspector general reported. "As a result, HUD paid more than $37 million in monthly subsidies for public housing units occupied by noncompliant tenants that otherwise could have housed compliant households."
In other words, HUD's failure to ensure compliance resulted in a situation in which subsidies were improperly provided to rule-breaking tenants at the expense of those who were complying with the rules.
While ineligible tenants received subsidies, "potential tenants were kept on waiting lists" according to the inspector general.
As the Washington Free Beacon noted, the report also emphasized that the federal government is in danger of misspending $448 million this year on additional subsidies to "noncompliant tenants."
The Inspector General found that out of 56 housing authorities it examined, HUD failed to monitor the CSSR program.
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