Houston told to repay $15 million in housing funds
The Chronicle's Mike Snyder reported over the weekend that Houston will have to repay at least $15 million in federal housing funds, one of the highest repayments ever demanded of a local agency:
The required repayment, either from local funds or future federal allocations, could rise as high as $25 million depending on the outcome of an ongoing review, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said. Even the minimum amount would be among the highest repayments HUD has ever demanded from local governments receiving its funds, a HUD spokesman said Friday.
The demand covers spending in all three of the major HUD programs that help the city provide housing and neighborhood improvement services ranging from down-payment assistance for working-class home buyers to repairs of houses occupied by the poor and elderly.
All of the questioned expenditures occurred before December 2004, when Mayor Bill White replaced the director of the city's Housing and Community Development Department and pledged reforms in the long-troubled agency, city and HUD officials said.
"This has nothing to do with the current situation," said Richard Celli, the department's current director. "These are problems that happened years ago."
Hmmmm, who WAS the director when the mismanagement ocurred? Who was mayor?
KHOU-11's Mark Greenblatt notes another aspect of this whole, long, drawn out mess:
And what's more, in 2004, the city promised the feds it would re-inspect and fix potentially shoddy work at thousands of other homes where work had taken place.
So what's happened in the last four years? Of 2,200 hundred homes, only 760 have been inspected again.
And it turns out one in nine homeowners have literally died, while waiting to get help.
In fact, the backlog of those who need new repairs has grown so long, the city simply stopped taking in applications, back in 2006.
And now, the federal government is giving the city of Houston 45 days to forward a detailed plan to accomplish those re-inspections. The feds are also demanding the city return millions of dollars that was to be spent on home improvement programs.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 03/10/08 07:51 PM | Print |
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