Audit Finds More Problems with Richland Housing Authority

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By Molly Kelleher

Summary

An audit released Monday finds Richland Housing Authority mismanaged money. And now the feds want answers or they are going to pull section eight funding in Richland.

Story Published: Sep 28, 2009 at 7:09 PM PST

Audit Finds More Problems with Richland Housing Authority
RICHLAND - An audit released Monday finds that the Richland Housing Authority mismanaged money. And now the feds want answers or they are going to pull Section 8 funding in Richland.

The report shows the Richland Housing Authority (RHA) did not handle Section 8 voucher money properly.

This is the fifth consecutive time an audit turned up problems.

"There's tough decisions to be made," said interim RHA director Connie Taresh.

Taresh just dipped into the hot seat last week after the RHA's director was asked to step down, mainly because of these kind of problems.

The audit shows that the housing authority did not handle Section 8 voucher money properly. And they didn't comply with federal requirements when tapping into HUD money.

That could mean HUD will pull their money out of the RHA.

A big blow like that could mean the end of the agency according to Taresh.

One of the big issues boils down to "where is the money?" Like the rainy day fund that was suppose to be there. The feds says it's suppose to be a half-million dollars. RHA says it's more like $300,000. That's $200,000 unaccounted for and they still don't know what happened to that money.

"We don't want to do anything that affects low-income families so we're going to do internal cuts, not to terminated families at this point."

Cuts are coming and they are going to be deep like reducing staff and maybe selling off some properties.

Meanwhile, the short-term goal is to get the feds back on their side. So an accountant comes in this week to start going through the numbers line by line to reassure HUD that they're working to fix the problem.

Action News asked, how can RHA regain public confidence?

"The only way we can do that is honesty and let people know this isn't going to get fixed quickly."

Because if it doesn't get fixed, this could end up being the last straw in an agency plagued with problems.