A scathing federal audit accuses the D.C. agency in charge of public housing of mismanagement and allowing thousands of public housing units to either sit vacant or fall into unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
The D.C. Housing Authority manages thousands of public housing units and administers millions of dollars in federally funded programs designed to help low-income residents find decent housing.
A 72-page audit the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently released found major problems with the D.C. agency and how it's running the city's housing programs.
"I want to be blunt. I’m saddened by that report and embarrassed by the conditions that that report shares about public housing," D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said on Wednesday.
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According to the audit, the D.C. Housing Authority has failed to provide "decent, safe and sanitary" housing, has inadequate management and does not adequately prevent crime.
Director of the D.C. Housing Authority Brenda Donald defended her management of the program in an interview with News4.
"There’s no secret that our public housing units are very old, they're outdated and … it's just been in the last year or so that we’ve really been aggressively making improvements for property maintenance," Donald said.
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The audit says the DCHA has nearly 40,000 people on its waitlist for housing, and of the more than 8,000 units it manages, more than 1,600 are vacant.
Some of those units are in such poor condition that they are uninhabitable, according to the audit.
Affordable housing and reducing homelessness has been a cornerstone of Bowser's administration. While Bowser has been successful in moving thousands of people from the streets to housing, the audit found that it has come at the cost of tens of thousands of low-income residents who have been waiting years for help.
According to the audit, the DCHA is only selecting homeless families from its waiting list.
"A number of families and individuals on that waitlist are already housed. They may be housed in public housing or they may also have a voucher or they may be with family, but they still stay on the waitlist," Donald said.
"We also have to focus on our most vulnerable, get them off the streets and get them into safe and affordable housing. So we have to do both," Bowser said.
D.C. has 60 days to respond to the audit and three months to implement corrective actions.
Donald said the DCHA has already implemented a plan to address many of the issues cited in the audit.
The audit warns that the city might have to repay the federal government if it's found that D.C. overpaid for rental housing.
