Quality Control for Rental Assistance

HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research recently published a Quality Control for Rental Assistance Subsidy Determinations report. The report finds that the percentage of errors in HUD program rental determinations — as well as the cumulative payments made in error — continues to remain stable when compared with results from previous studies.

The study is the eighth in a series of annual analyses designed to yield national estimates of the extent, severity, costs, and sources of rent errors in tenant subsidies for nearly all of HUD’s current housing assistance programs, including Housing Choice Vouchers, public housing, and privately-owned subsidized rental projects.

These studies measure the extent of income and rent determination error by housing program administrators and do not involve audits of individual Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) or projects. The focus is on identifying households where an error was made when calculating the amount of the household’s rent, and on providing nationally representative findings related to those errors. The results are used to assess HUD’s performance in reducing Improper Payments and in ensuring compliance with the Improper Payments Information Act (IPIA) of 2002.

The findings presented in this report are based on data collected from February through June 2010 for actions taken by PHAs and project staff during FY 2009 (October 2008 through September 2009).