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Federal COVID-19 Funding: Emergency Rental Assistance Program

This report focuses exclusively on The Department of Housing and Community Development's (HCD) progress in committing and awarding rent relief program benefits to eligible California households by the first crucial federal deadline, which is September 30, 2021. Although HCD is making significant progress toward meeting the first federal deadline, it must commit additional benefits to eligible households in order to reduce the State’s risk of losing millions of dollars in federal funds for this program.

California Department of Housing and Community Development: It Failed to Expedite Access to Federal Funding to Address the Impact of the COVID‑19 Pandemic on California’s Homeless Population

The California Department of Housing and Community Development administers the Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) program, which received $316 million in federal funding to prevent, prepare for, and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic (ESG-CV) for individuals who are at risk of or experiencing homelessness. Th e following report details our conclusion that the department failed to expedite access to federal funding to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the homeless population.

Despite the COVID‑19 Public Health Emergency, the Department Can Do More to Address Chronic Medi‑Cal Eligibility Problems

As authorized by state law, our office conducted a state high risk audit of the Department of Health Care Services’ (Health Care Services) management of federal funds related to the COVID-19 public health emergency that began in 2020. Health Care Services administers the Medi-Cal program, which received a significant increase in federal support to respond to the emergency.

State High Risk Update—Coronavirus Relief Fund California Should Have Allocated More Funding to Small Counties

This letter report provides an update on our assessment of the State’s management of federal funds related to Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a high risk statewide issue

State High Risk State Management of Federal COVID-19 Funding

This letter report identifies 18 state agencies that will each be responsible for managing a portion of the federal COVID‑19 funds. Before finalizing our determination to add this issue to the state high risk list, we notified the 18 responsible state agencies about our preliminary determination and invited them to provide their perspective on the issue. We received responses from 12 of the 18 state agencies, and we summarize those responses at the end of this letter.

Homelessness in California: The State's Uncoordinated Approach to Addressing Homelessness Has Hampered the Effectiveness of Its Efforts

We conducted an audit of five local governments who play a key role in a Continuum of Care (CoC). Our assessment of CoC agencies—groups of organizations, including local government agencies and homeless service providers, that receive funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to work toward ending homelessness within specified geographic areas—focused on best practices related to homeless services.

Employment Development Department: EDD's Poor Planning and Ineffective Management Left It Unprepared to Assist Californians Unemployed by COVID-19 Shutdowns

The economic shutdowns in early 2020 led to historically high numbers of UI claims in a very short time (claim surge), and further shutdowns began in December 2020, raising the potential for additional spikes in unemployment. This audit reviewed EDD’s response to the claim surge, its handling of the resulting backlog of unpaid claims, and the assistance it has provided to individuals through its call center

Employment Development Department: Significant Weaknesses in EDD's Approach to Fraud Prevention Have Led to Billions of Dollars in Improper Benefits Payments

Since the surge in pandemic‑related California unemployment claims began in March 2020, individuals, news organizations, and law enforcement officials have reported many cases of potential and actual UI fraud. Not surprisingly, the pandemic conditions increased EDD’s UI workloads and also resulted in changes to federal UI benefit programs, both of which have created a greater risk of fraud

Judicial Branch Procurement: Courts Generally Met Procurement Requirements, but Some Need to Improve their Payment Practices

This report concludes that the five courts we reviewed for this audit—the superior courts in Alameda, Contra Costa, Lake, Orange, and San Bernardino counties—adhered to most of the required and recommended procurement and contracting practices that we evaluated, but they could improve in certain areas.

California Department of Public Health: It Could Do More to Ensure Federal Funds for Expanding the State’s COVID‑19 Testing and Contact Tracing Programs Are Used Effectively

We found that the State has met or exceeded targets for testing individuals for COVID‑19, but contact tracing throughout the State has lagged behind case surges that have far exceeded Public Health’s initial planning

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