HUD Recommends the City of Dallas Pay Back up to $6.6 Million in Misused Housing Funds
When it came to doling out federal dollars for an affordable housing program known colloquially as CHODOs, the feds say the city of Dallas skipped key steps and is asking to return more than $6 million. According to an audit by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the city didn’t follow the program’s environmental requirements and failed to keep proper environmental records. The audit says the city didn’t do its due diligence in ensuring that affordable units were being built in a timely manner. It also says the city simply did not properly administer the program. The OIG says Dallas misspent more than $6.6 million and it wants it back.
The OIG recommends the Fort Worth Office of Community Planning and Development—the HUD office that administers the program in DFW—orders Dallas repay $2.4 million. That’s the sum of projects the city approved without undergoing an environmental review or receiving proper HUD approval.
But the damage doesn’t stop there. HUD wants the city on the hook to “support or repay” the additional $4.4 million. Those numbers could change as the city responds (protocol dictates that the Fort Worth office will soon issue it a timeframe for turning around that response). In some cases, reductions to the fines can occur when the city agrees to corrective action.
The city sent a response to the OIG over a draft copy of the audit. The note penned by Economic Development and Neighborhood Services Chief Michael Mendoza and attached to the final audit attempted to swat away many of the office’s findings.
Read more: https://www.dmagazine.com/frontburner/2019/06/hud-recommends-the-city-of-dallas-pay-back-up-to-6-6-million-in-misused-housing-funds/
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