Public Housing

Problems Continue To Plague the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority Gao ID: RCED-88-122 April 20, 1988

In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority's (CMHA) operations, focusing on: (1) previously identified CMHA problems; (2) its controls over the expenditure of federal housing funds; and (3) problems in its administration of the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation Program.

GAO analyzed eight reports issued since 1982 on CMHA operations, and found that CMHA: (1) had significant long-standing management problems in finance and accounting, purchasing and inventory control, and maintenance and custodial services; (2) failed to maintain adequate internal controls over expenditures of federal funds; (3) did not comply with HUD program regulations regarding contract payments; (4) awarded 12 consultant or architectural/engineering contracts valued at $742,881 without HUD approval; (5) did not follow its own procedures in 34 payments totalling $267,000; and (6) made eight payments totalling $45,542 without invoices. GAO also found that, under the Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation Program, CMHA: (1) overpaid landlords an estimated $245,000 due to erroneous calculations by its staff; (2) failed to discover landlords' misrepresentations of purchase and repair costs; and (3) cancelled three housing contracts, improperly paying $15,144 in rent subsidies.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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