A freshman House Republican is calling for an investigation after a government report revealed the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is allowing people that make over a quarter of a million dollars per year to stay in public housing and has refused to take any action to evict them.
The July report highlighted a New York City family making nearly $500,000 a year, plus another $263,000 per year in rental income, is able to live in public housing and pay just $1,574 a month for its three-bedroom apartment. HUD’s Office of Inspector General said HUD has no plans to evict that family or others who are abusing the program.
Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., called for a congressional investigation on Tuesday, and has demanded that HUD explain how resources meant for the poor have been wasted this way.
“Our subcommittee has to make difficult decisions regarding programs that truly impact lives. …Housing subsidies for millionaires, however, fails entirely to be such a program,” he wrote to HUD Secretary Julian Castro.
“With an ever-growing waitlist for housing assistance for those truly in need, these incidences of waste, fraud and abuse should be eliminated immediately,” said Jolly. “It is time to clean house at HUD.”
Americans “deserve to know that their tax dollars are used for those rightfully in need of assistance, and not irresponsibly squandered subsidizing those in the highest income brackets,” he wrote.
Jolly also wrote to a House Appropriations subcommittee to ask that it look into how the wealthy can use the program. “I am requesting of you today that we immediately convene a congressional investigation and hearing upon our return to session to investigate this current failed housing policy by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and to identify together ways to use the annual budget process to permanently eliminate these incidents of waste, fraud and abuse,” Jolly wrote.
The inspector general report found that more than 25,000 families living in public housing made too much to qualify.
One public housing tenant had assets valued at over $1.6 million, yet paid just $300 a month for an apartment in Oxford, Neb. A family of five that made $204,784 last year paid $1,091 a month for a four-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles, and have lived in public housing since 1974.
The government agency offered a variety of excuses as to why it has no plans to evict the over-income families. Evicting them “would work against HUD’s efforts to deconcentrate poverty in public housing developments,” HUD told auditors. HUD also claims that it would need to request an additional $116.5 million from the federal government if it removed these families from the rolls because the rental income they pay helps subsidize the program.
Although families must make under a certain amount of money when they enter the housing program, under HUD’s regulations, they may stay in housing for as many years as they want afterwards provided they are good tenants.
The report said HUD argued that the presence of these wealthy families living in public housing is a good thing, and that these families are “role models” who show low income families that “self sufficiency could be achieved.”
Subsidizing housing for over-income families will cost taxpayers $104 million annually, auditors found. Their presence in public housing also denies access to over 300,000 families low-income families who currently languish for years on waiting lists, according to the report.
The vast majority of the 25,226 over-income families, 98 percent, made from $10,000 to $70,000 a year over the qualifying income. Almost 18,000 households had made too much to qualify for public housing for over a year.
Of the 25,226 over-income families, over 10,000 were in New York, almost 10 times the number of other localities. Puerto Rico had the second most with 1,219 over-income families. Utah had the fewest with just seven families in public housing that did not meet the income requirements.
The over-income families are approximately 2.6 percent of the total 1.1 million families HUD houses, auditors found.
“We did not find that HUD and public housing authorities had taken or planned to take sufficient steps to reduce at least the egregious examples of over income families in public housing,” the audit reported. “Therefore, it is reasonable to expect the number of over income families participating in the program to increase over time.”
