The Louisiana Legislative auditor this morning released a report finding issues with the city-parish’s Office of Community Development and its administration of the federally funded HOME program.
The auditor’s office noted six findings, four of which involved the HOME program.
According to the report, the auditor found OCD could not provide documentation proving the required on-site inspections for rental units in the program had taken place or that its project contractor had complied with prevailing wage requirements.
OCD records indicate there are seven projects that include rental units subject to the housing quality inspections, but none had documentation proving that an on-site inspection had been completed as required by the federal grant. The audit says the department did not devote personnel to complete the required inspections on the HOME rental units.
Further, OCD could not provide documentation to show it evaluated projects before committing HOME program funds to them or that it had received required annual reports from all of the developers of rental housing funded with the money.
In response, the OCD has transitioned these responsibilities to Build Baton Rouge, which will review and update the list of projects as well as analyze the on-site monitoring requirements for each property. In the future, a staff member will be assigned to perform Housing Quality Standard inspections for each project. Long-term monitoring files will be created for each project in the affordability period and the inspection documentation will be placed in the project folder for future audits.
Build Baton Rouge will also conduct a formal subsidy layering review for all open HOME projects.
The other findings in the audit involve the underfunding of a retirement plan for certain city police employees who transferred membership to the Municipal Employees’ Police Retirement System and the lack of a perpetual inventory system for the Mosquito Abatement and Rodent Control Commission.
The auditor also noted the thefts of construction equipment and limestone. The thefts were discovered by officials and were reported to law enforcement authorities. See the full report.
