Today, the House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, led by Chairman Dan Meuser (PA-09), held a hearing entitled, "Decades of Dysfunction: Restoring Accountability at HUD." The hearing examined the persistent waste, fraud, and mismanagement within the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Members underscored the critical need for congressional oversight and review by the Department of Government Oversight and Efficiency to ensure transparency, accountability, and operational effectiveness within the agency.
The Committee is seeking stories and information concerning waste, fraud, or abuse at public housing offices across the country. If you have information you’d like to share please reach out to Financial Services Committee Republicans at: fsrwhistleblowers@mail.house.gov
"HUD has an important mission: provide decent, safe, and affordable housing to Americans. Unfortunately, over the years, in my view, the agency has shown – time and time again – they are unable to perform even the most basic functions. The agency continually fails to hold local Public Housing Authorities responsible for not providing safe housing," said Chairman French Hill (AR-02).
"For decades, HUD’s IG has investigated, uncovered, and highlighted severe deficiencies plaguing the agency. HUD’s core mission is to provide safe and affordable housing, something we all support on this Subcommittee. However, HUD continues to waste taxpayer funds while failing to meet its most basic responsibilities and has little to no mechanisms to track and report these issues," said Subcommittee Chair Dan Meuser.
Stephen Begg, Acting Inspector General, HUD, noted that “Improper payments are a longstanding and significant problem in the federal government, but HUD has uniquely struggled to identify and mitigate the risk of improper payments in its largest programs… For more than a decade, HUD has been unable to accurately estimate improper payments in its highest risk programs – Tenant-Based Rental Assistance (TBRA) and Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA). TBRA and PBRA account for roughly two-thirds of HUD’s annual program expenditures, totaling roughly $50 billion in FY 2024. For the past 8 years, HUD has failed to produce improper payments estimates that comply with the law and has stated it may not be able to produce reliable estimates until 2027, leaving hundreds of millions of dollars of HUD funding at increased risk of waste, fraud, and mismanagement.”
