Sneak Preview: Accurate Housing Unit Data Sought for HTF Program
(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) aims to emphasize to states receiving Housing Trust Fund (HTF) grants the importance of reporting accurate data on the total number of housing units in completed construction projects, in response to a recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (Pub. L. 110-289) authorized the HTF program to increase and preserve the supply of housing for low-income individuals and families, and HUD began providing HTF funds to states in 2016. As of March 2022, HTF grantees had developed 2,186 rental units in 263 projects for households with extremely low incomes (i.e., those not exceeding 30% of the area median). Also as of that time, recipients also committed HTF funds to build another 519 projects with an estimated 6,646 units. From the date HUD executes an HTF grant, the recipient has two years to commit, and five years to expend, all of the funds.
HUD requires HTF grantees to include an allocation plan describing their intended distribution of program funds in their annual action plan. HUD provides grantees with a template in its Integrated Disbursement and Information System (IDIS) grants management database for the HTF allocation plan. HUD officials review the annual action plans, including the HTF allocation plans, to ensure grantees have provided all the required information. HUD monitors recipients to identify those that are approaching deadlines for uncommitted or unexpended funds, and informs the grantees and relevant HUD field offices about any concerns related to the use of these funds.
GAO identified two weaknesses in HUD’s oversight of the completion of projects using HTF assistance. First, it found that the agency’s data on the total number of units in completed HTF-assisted projects are inaccurate. When grantees initially set up HTF project activities in IDIS, the system prepopulates the “total completed units” field using the number that grantees enter in the “estimated HTF units” field. At project completion, grantees are required to update the “total completed units” field. GAO compared IDIS data against data it collected from 12 selected grantees, noting that among the 68 completed projects in its sample, grantees had not entered accurate information about total units in IDIS for 13 projects.
“This implies that the grantees did not update the prepopulated number for total units when they entered project completion information,” GAO explained. “CPD headquarters officials acknowledged that grantees may be neglecting to update the prepopulated field, but they had not provided grantees additional guidance on updating the total units field.”
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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