During a House Financial Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. French Hill (R-AR) questioned Stephen Begg, Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, about issues in housing authority oversight.
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00:00General Ady yields back. The gentleman from Arkansas, Chairman Hill, is now
00:04recognized for five minutes. Thank you, Chairman. And again, Acting Inspector
00:09General, thank you for being with us today. As I noted in my opening comments,
00:14the Metropolitan Housing Allowance in Little Rock has faced significant
00:18financial mismanagement, failing property conditions, and leadership instability
00:23for years. As Chairman, ensuring HUD works for the American people and not
00:29against the American people is a priority for me. HUD has been long aware of the
00:34mismanagement at the Metropolitan Housing Authority, and yet issues persist. How,
00:38in your view, should HUD engage with troubled public housing authorities like
00:43the one in my district? Thank you for the question. Oversight of troubled housing
00:50authorities is a very challenging endeavor, and the best answer to your
00:56question is engaging with housing authorities before they become
01:00troubled. When housing authorities become substandard, really working with them
01:05closely to avoid a scenario where they get into a troubled status, because it's very
01:10hard to get out of it once you're in it. Yeah. And so, in other words, trying to be
01:17proactive at the local office and the regional office, in your view, should be a
01:24priority. But, in your view, has that been a systemic problem at HUD? How many troubled,
01:31how many public house gazes are classified as troubled by HUD? I don't have the number
01:37off the top of my head, but I don't believe it's a substantial number compared to the
01:41overall footprint of over 3,000 housing authorities. But, what you've said about my view on the topic is
01:48correct. And how should new HUD leadership, and every time we have a new HUD
01:55secretary, we have a new way to turn the page and do it differently. If you're
01:57advising Secretary Turner, how can he achieve that proactive approach, and how
02:02could we see better enforcement of housing rules by, again, the local HUD
02:08office versus, or a regional office? Well, again, it starts with systems. The current
02:16systems that HUD uses to manage its public and Indian housing portfolio lack key data
02:22inputs. They rely on self-certification from housing authorities, and the
02:28information that's available to HUD to monitor them is challenging to work with.
02:32Enhancing those systems, getting better data in real-time, would allow HUD staff a
02:37better chance of working with more housing authorities to avoid a scenario where they
02:41become troubled, because the staff is limited in capacity on how many housing
02:45authorities they can really dedicate time to. And do you find that HUD's approach, in
02:53addition to being slow, is too deferential to the local housing authority to try to
02:58solve its, essentially try to solve its own problem, and therefore they're just
03:03letting it fester with the local officials not hearing directly from federal
03:09oversight? I don't know if it's deferential as much as a true capacity
03:14challenge. There are so many issues in the portfolio, both in the physical conditions
03:19of property and then the execution of the programs, that I don't think there are
03:24enough people to work with all the housing authorities, and there's not enough
03:27information available to them to do it efficiently. But if I told you a particular
03:32multifamily housing complex that took Section 8 vouchers, who was routinely failing
03:40local property code inspections, routinely the site of police, multiple times a week pursuing
03:51criminal activity, and that the local housing authority, the local HUD office consistently
03:59let that owner have access to the Section 8 voucher program, would that concern you?
04:04Yes, but unfortunately it's a common occurrence. The affordable housing supply is in such a shortage
04:13that many times the HUD staff is forced to try to find alternatives that don't exist. And so sometimes
04:21the best option is to try to continue to work out of the scenario. Sometimes they work it out and
04:28sometimes they don't. Well here it was an outrage by the local city council. Nothing was done at the
04:34Metropolitan Housing Authority. Nothing was done at HUD. Nothing was done at the Fort Worth regional office.
04:40And finally the state attorney general had to take action and bring criminal charges against the landowner
04:48in this case. And there was an 11 million dollar judgment. I think that's a situation run amok. I think all
04:55this could have been stopped by just the most basic oversight with bad systems or not. So we look forward
05:03to working with you on how to improve accountability at HUD. I thank the chairman and I yield back.