We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) oversight of public housing agencies’ declarations of trust.  The audit was part of the activities in our fiscal year 2015 annual audit plan.  Our audit objective was to determine whether HUD had adequate oversight of public housing agencies’ compliance with its declaration of trust requirements. HUD did not always ensure that public housing agencies maintained…

Historically, HUD program managers have not wanted to enforce program requirements. That reluctance increases the risk that program funds will not provide maximum benefits to recipients and allows serious noncompliances to go unchecked. When it was created, the Departmental Enforcement Center had independent enforcement authority, but it lost that authority when it moved from the Deputy Secretary’s office to the Office of General Counsel (OGC…

We assessed the HUD Office of the Chief Procurement Officer’s acquisition improvement initiatives. HUD has faced many acquisition challenges over the years and we found HUD had made progress in addressing those challenges. We observed that HUD had not developed a sound, cohesive strategy to address improvement initiatives, offices did not communicate or coordinate effectively, and offices did not agree on the best way to address acquisitions…

We audited the Westmoreland County Housing Authority’s Housing Choice Voucher program.  We selected the Authority for audit because the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) authorized it more than $8.7 million in program funding per year for fiscal years 2013 and 2014 and we had not audited its program.  Our audit objective was to determine whether the Authority managed its waiting list and selected families in…

We reviewed the general and application controls over the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) Single Family Insurance System (SFIS) and Single Family Insurance Claims subsystem (Claims) as part of the internal control assessments required for the fiscal year 2015 financial statement audit under the Chief Financial Officer’s Act of 1990.  Our objective was to evaluate the general and application controls over SFIS and Claims for…

We have completed a review of the internal controls over the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) data.  We focused our review primarily on performing an in-depth business process analysis of Ginnie Mae’s two Master Subservicer supporting contractors.  This review was conducted as part of the Office of Inspector General’s audit of HUD’s financial statements for…

In accordance with the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990, as amended, we are required to annually audit the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the stand alone financial statements of the Federal Housing Administration and the Government National Mortgage Administration (Ginnie Mae). Our objective was to express an opinion on the fairness of the financial…

The Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 (FISMA) directs the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to conduct an annual evaluation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) information security program.  FISMA, Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) establish information technology (IT) security guidance and…

In response to a request made by the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of Community Planning and Development (CPD), the Office of Inspector General, Office of Evaluation reviewed State qualified action plans to determine whether States included alternative building standards that are equivalent to Energy Star® building standard. CPD tracks HUD funded new home constructions that meet the Energy Star® building standard as they contribute…

We are required to audit the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) annually in accordance with the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 as amended.  This report supplements our independent auditor’s report on the results of our audit of HUD’s principal financial statements for the fiscal years ending September 30, 2015 and 2014.  Provided are assessments of HUD’s internal…

In accordance with the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-576), as amended, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) is required to audit the financial statements of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) annually. The scope of our audit included FHA’s fiscal years 2015 and 2014 financial statements, which are composed of the balance sheets and the related statements of net cost and changes in net position and the combined…

This report presents the results of our audit of Ginnie Mae’s fiscal years 2015 and 2014 (restated) financial statements, including our report on Ginnie Mae’s internal control and test of compliance with selected provisions of laws and regulations applicable to Ginnie Mae.  For the second consecutive year, in fiscal year 2015, we were unable to obtain sufficient appropriate evidence to express an opinion on the fairness of the $ 5.4…

We reviewed information system controls over the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) computing environment.  This review was conducted as part of the Office of Inspector General’s audit of HUD’s financial statements for fiscal year 2015 under the Chief Financial Officer’s Act of 1990. The OIG has determined that the contents of this report would not be appropriate for public disclosure and has therefore limited its…

This report presents the results of our fiscal year 2014 audit of Ginnie Mae’s financial statements, including our report on Ginnie Mae’s internal control and test of compliance with selected provisions of laws and regulations applicable to Ginnie Mae.  We contracted with the independent certified public accounting firm of CliftonLarsonAllen LLP to audit Ginnie Mae’s fiscal year 2013 financial statements.  CliftonLarsonAllen was…

We conducted a review of the Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh’s payments for outside legal services in conjunction with an ongoing internal audit of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) oversight of public housing agencies’ expenditures for outside legal services.  Our review objective was to determine whether the Authority made payments for outside legal services in compliance with applicable…

This memorandum is the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) response to the Government National Mortgage Association’s (Ginnie Mae) official restatement notification, dated September 16, 2015.  We are issuing this memorandum because we believe Ginnie Mae did not completely and adequately disclose the severity of the misstatements identified to allow report users who rely on Ginnie Mae’s…

Office of Evaluation, IT Evaluation Division (iTED) conducted an evaluation of HUD’s IT Modernization program, which included reviews on the implementation and maturity of HUD’s capital planning and investment control (CIPIC) process and Enterprise Architecture (EA) program. With the corroboration of HUD’s Office of Chief Information Officer (OCIO), the report focuses on three major IT programs and policies within the CPIC and EA programs: IT…

We audited the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency’s implementation of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Loss Mitigation program for loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).  We conducted the audit because the Agency had the largest active portfolio and the largest number of delinquent loans for servicers located in Pennsylvania as of October 2014.  Our objectives were to determine whether…

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) partial claim option because we noted issues in the postclaim review process during a previous partial claim audit.1 Our audit objective was to determine whether HUD had adequate controls over its postclaim reviews and adequate policies in place to ensure that servicers properly understood the…

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) oversight of its Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program and found that 33 borrowers had more than 1 loan under the program.  Having multiple loans violated program requirements because HUD requires borrowers to reside in the mortgaged residence as their principal residence and borrowers may not have more than one principal residence at the same time.  We…