City of Cleburne, Texas

Assistance Listing Numbers: 14.871 – Housing Voucher Cluster Federal Agency: U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Pass-through Entity: N/A Type of Finding: Material Weakness in Internal Control over Compliance and Noncompliance Compliance Requirement: Special Tests and Provisions Questioned Costs: None Criteria 24 CFR 982.305(a) requires that grantees must inspect housing units at least biennially, and annually per their Housing Administrative Plan, to determine whether housing units meet Housing Quality Standards. 2 CFR 200 requires that internal control over compliance be established to provide reasonable assurance for compliance. Condition During our audit testing, we haphazardly selected a sample of 40 tenants to determine if the admission criteria were met. Of those 40 tenants, we identified 7 instances where an inspection was not conducted on an annual basis. Cause The City’s established procedures did not include sufficient controls to ensure that the criteria were met in accordance with policy and regulation before the housing assistance payments were authorized. Effect The City was not in compliance with these program requirements. Recommendation We recommend that management strengthen controls to ensure that housing assistance payments are not authorized before the required criteria are met. Ideally, this would include changes to the authorization process that prevent authorization from being made without the review having been completed. Management’s Response Management acknowledges the audit finding related to Material Weakness in Internal Control over Compliance and Noncompliance for 14.841 – Housing Voucher Cluster. We agree with the assessment and recognize the importance of addressing the underlying issue to enhance the organization's operations and internal controls. To resolve this issue, the City has already implemented staffing changes aimed at addressing this material weakness and better program management for housing. These changes include the hiring of Terrence Hamilton. Terrence comes to the City with a strong background in housing and has already implemented structural changes to address housing division needs. Management is confident that the hiring of Terrence and the support for his actions have effectively remediated the material weakness and will help prevent similar issues in the future. We remain committed to maintaining strong internal controls and will continue to monitor the effectiveness of these changes regularly.