‘That’s A Situation Run Amok’: French Hill Grills HUD Official On Housing Oversight Failures

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During a House Financial Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. French Hill (R-AR) questioned Stephen Begg, Acting Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, about issues in housing authority oversight.

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00:00General Ady yields back. The gentleman from Arkansas, Chairman Hill, is now

00:04recognized for five minutes. Thank you, Chairman. And again, Acting Inspector

00:09General, thank you for being with us today. As I noted in my opening comments,

00:14the Metropolitan Housing Allowance in Little Rock has faced significant

00:18financial mismanagement, failing property conditions, and leadership instability

00:23for years. As Chairman, ensuring HUD works for the American people and not

00:29against the American people is a priority for me. HUD has been long aware of the

00:34mismanagement at the Metropolitan Housing Authority, and yet issues persist. How,

00:38in your view, should HUD engage with troubled public housing authorities like

00:43the one in my district? Thank you for the question. Oversight of troubled housing

00:50authorities is a very challenging endeavor, and the best answer to your

00:56question is engaging with housing authorities before they become

01:00troubled. When housing authorities become substandard, really working with them

01:05closely to avoid a scenario where they get into a troubled status, because it's very

01:10hard to get out of it once you're in it. Yeah. And so, in other words, trying to be

01:17proactive at the local office and the regional office, in your view, should be a

01:24priority. But, in your view, has that been a systemic problem at HUD? How many troubled,

01:31how many public house gazes are classified as troubled by HUD? I don't have the number

01:37off the top of my head, but I don't believe it's a substantial number compared to the

01:41overall footprint of over 3,000 housing authorities. But, what you've said about my view on the topic is

01:48correct. And how should new HUD leadership, and every time we have a new HUD

01:55secretary, we have a new way to turn the page and do it differently. If you're

01:57advising Secretary Turner, how can he achieve that proactive approach, and how

02:02could we see better enforcement of housing rules by, again, the local HUD

02:08office versus, or a regional office? Well, again, it starts with systems. The current

02:16systems that HUD uses to manage its public and Indian housing portfolio lack key data

02:22inputs. They rely on self-certification from housing authorities, and the

02:28information that's available to HUD to monitor them is challenging to work with.

02:32Enhancing those systems, getting better data in real-time, would allow HUD staff a

02:37better chance of working with more housing authorities to avoid a scenario where they

02:41become troubled, because the staff is limited in capacity on how many housing

02:45authorities they can really dedicate time to. And do you find that HUD's approach, in

02:53addition to being slow, is too deferential to the local housing authority to try to

02:58solve its, essentially try to solve its own problem, and therefore they're just

03:03letting it fester with the local officials not hearing directly from federal

03:09oversight? I don't know if it's deferential as much as a true capacity

03:14challenge. There are so many issues in the portfolio, both in the physical conditions

03:19of property and then the execution of the programs, that I don't think there are

03:24enough people to work with all the housing authorities, and there's not enough

03:27information available to them to do it efficiently. But if I told you a particular

03:32multifamily housing complex that took Section 8 vouchers, who was routinely failing

03:40local property code inspections, routinely the site of police, multiple times a week pursuing

03:51criminal activity, and that the local housing authority, the local HUD office consistently

03:59let that owner have access to the Section 8 voucher program, would that concern you?

04:04Yes, but unfortunately it's a common occurrence. The affordable housing supply is in such a shortage

04:13that many times the HUD staff is forced to try to find alternatives that don't exist. And so sometimes

04:21the best option is to try to continue to work out of the scenario. Sometimes they work it out and

04:28sometimes they don't. Well here it was an outrage by the local city council. Nothing was done at the

04:34Metropolitan Housing Authority. Nothing was done at HUD. Nothing was done at the Fort Worth regional office.

04:40And finally the state attorney general had to take action and bring criminal charges against the landowner

04:48in this case. And there was an 11 million dollar judgment. I think that's a situation run amok. I think all

04:55this could have been stopped by just the most basic oversight with bad systems or not. So we look forward

05:03to working with you on how to improve accountability at HUD. I thank the chairman and I yield back.

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