Federal Reports

We audited the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Public and Indian Housing’s (PIH) Housing Choice Voucher Program to assess public housing agencies’ (PHA) controls to prevent and combat source of income discrimination. In limited circumstances, Federal law and regulations prohibit source of income discrimination in certain HUD-assisted housing.  As of January 2025, 23 states and the District of Columbia had passed statewide laws prohibiting source of income discrimination by officially designating source of income as a protected class, with 16 of them explicitly prohibiting discrimination against housing choice voucher holders.  Meanwhile, 152 cities/counties in 27 states have passed local ordinances which prohibit source of income discrimination, including cities and counties in 19 states without a statewide law.  Our audit objective was to assess the extent to which PHAs with Housing Choice Voucher Programs in states with a statewide source of income discrimination law implemented controls to prevent and combat source of income discrimination.

PIH has no requirement for PHAs to document source of income discrimination complaints.  While PIH uses lease-up rates in overseeing PHAs, PIH does not task PHAs with investigating complaints of source of income discrimination.  In the 16 states with a statewide source of income discrimination law that explicitly includes housing choice voucher holders, PHAs reported receiving few source of income discrimination complaints, and most PHAs had guidance for staff and other processes to act on such complaints. Most PHAs’ policies and procedures contained detailed actions for responding to a complaint, while some PHAs only had general statements that the PHA would assist participants.  Varying degrees of training and education efforts for staff, program participants, and landlords were observed at the selected PHAs, which some PHA officials believed was an effective means of preventing and combating source of income discrimination.  Most PHAs did not have a method for documenting or recording the complaints they received, which PIH encourages as a way PHAs can track complaints and monitor for patterns of discrimination.  PIH also encourages PHAs to (1) work with landlords to resolve complaints and (2) inform voucher holders of their right to file a complaint with the appropriate local fair housing organization if complaints are not resolved.

The report contains no recommendations.

OIG assessed whether the Risk Management Agency provided adequate oversight and ensured that all required high-dollar indemnity reviews were conducted. 

Our Objective(s)
To assess FTA's oversight of State Safety Oversight Agency (SSOA) compliance with Federal requirements. Specifically, we assessed FTA's (1) communication of its SSO audit oversight methodology, (2) SSO audit process, and (3) reliability of SSO audit data in its recommendation tracking system.

Why This Audit
FTA plays a significant role in promoting the safety of our Nation's public transit systems through its oversight of States' implementation of its SSO program. This program is required for eligible States with rail transit systems in their jurisdiction that receive Federal funding. FTA is responsible for oversight of SSOAs' compliance with Federal requirements and is required to triennially audit the operations of each SSOA as part of its oversight. In response to a directive in House of Representatives Report 117-99, which asked us to analyze SSOAs, we initiated this audit.

What We Found
FTA has not communicated its oversight methodology to SSOAs.
FTA oversees SSO programs primarily through SSO audits.
Although FTA communicates its oversight process to SSOAs, it has not shared the indicators the auditors will look at or the steps they will take to evaluate the SSO program. Therefore, FTA is not meeting its statutory requirement to convey a methodology to SSOAs that describes how it will monitor their effectiveness.
FTA met its requirement to perform SSO oversight, but gaps reduced audit utility.
Since 2019, FTA has successfully completed 38 SSO audit reports that provided 221 findings.
However, for 29 of the 54 findings within our scope of our review, FTA did not include sufficient evidence to support the finding or provide suitable criteria, as recommended under commonly used auditing standards.
FTA's audit documentation did not demonstrate that audits were consistently conducted and that important program risk areas were addressed uniformly.
These issues resulted from insufficient quality control in the audit process.
FTA's recommendation tracking system data for SSO audits is not reliable.
FTA's system for tracking SSO audit recommendations, OTrak, is missing records from the first 2 years of the program because FTA did not populate OTrak with audit findings from prior to fiscal year 2021.
FTA's supervision of OTrak entries is insufficient to provide reasonable assurance that data from 2021 onward are accurate.

Recommendations
We made 5 recommendations to improve FTA's oversight of SSOA compliance with Federal requirements.