We recommend that HUD’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Housing Counseling ensure that the new Housing Counseling Agency Management System provides HUD with the ability to adequately oversee the work of its staff and track important housing counseling agency milestones, including HUD approval expirations and required terminations.

Obtain HUD approval of policies and procedures before executing its subrecipient agreements and ensure that its finalized policies and procedures include but not limited to financial management, procurement, duplication of benefits, and monitoring.

Establish adequate financial controls to ensure that its disaster funds are properly classified and allocated to the correct grant and ensure that DRGR drawdowns are conducted in a timely manner.

Provide adequate training to staff on the appropriate classification of disaster recovery activities to ensure costs are accurately allocated and recorded.

Continue to establish a data sharing agreement with FEMA for Hurricanes Hermine and Matthew to ensure that all sources of funding are included in its disaster policies and procedures to prevent duplication of benefits and ensure that the term of the agreement is sufficient.

Continue to negotiate with SBA to extend its data-sharing agreements for the term of the expenditure requirements set forth in public laws or the Federal Register.

Continue to fill its vacancy and assess staffing resources as it prepares for additional disaster funds.

Board 47 partial claim notes that were not boarded into SMART, resulting in funds to be put to better use in the amount of $716,061.

Remove 24 duplicate partial claim note entries from SMART, resulting in funds to be put to better use in the amount of $697,354.

Review 249 loans labeled with “DNV” in appendix D to identify any missing note or mortgage documents for the partial claims. For loans identified with missing documents, the Deputy Assistant Secretary should obtain the documents or require the lender to reimburse HUD for the partial claim note. For loans identified with unrecorded mortgage documents, the Deputy Assistant Secretary should require them to be recorded at the county’s office to ensure that HUD’s interests are protected.

Rerecord the mortgage documents at the respective counties’ offices for 18 loans for which the partial claim mortgages were inappropriately released, resulting in funds to be put to better use in the amount of $451,000.

Review four loans with partial claim notes already recorded in SMART and remove those loans in which HUD has not paid a partial claim, resulting in funds to be put to better use in the amount of $93,409.

Reverse the transaction for one loan for which the transaction removing a partial claim note was made in error, resulting in funds to be put to better use in the amount of $63,591.

Collect on one partial claim note for which the loan had matured, resulting in funds to be put to better use in the amount of $1,905.

Review two loans in which the partial claim note amount entered was different from the note or mortgage amount to ensure that the appropriate partial claim note amount is entered into SMART, resulting in funds to be put to better use in the amount of $622.

Update its procedures to allow automatic boarding for all partial claims paid to eliminate errors caused by manual boarding, including partial claim notes not boarded, and partial claim notes boarded but not yet paid by HUD.

Develop and implement procedures and controls to board all manually paid partial claims and record all lender payments received via claim remittances.

Develop and implement additional controls to ensure that it accepts only note and mortgage documents with correct amounts that could be matched to the amount recorded in SMART and that the note and mortgage documents marked as received are entered into SMART.

Develop and implement additional controls to ensure that it releases mortgages only when they have been satisfied.

Provide documentation to show that disbursements totaling $2,136,849 and any bank transfers to the owner’s non-project accounts that occurred outside of our audit period were reasonable and necessary expenses for the operation of the project or repay the project from non-project funds for any amount that it cannot support.