HUD secretary says auditor will get to the bottom of Housing Authority issues

“Why were these problems at the Philadelphia Housing Authority not caught sooner by HUD, and what are you putting in place to make sure that doesn’t happen again?” Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick asked of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.

 

“Clearly there are things that we can do to step up our focus on troubled housing authorities and to make sure – not just that we’re taking substantial actions when there issues come to light, which we’ve done here,” Donovan said today.

“We’ve cut-off their excessive spending on outside legal counsel, we brought in a very experienced executive director to take over the Housing Authority, and as you rightly point out, did call for the board to step down and we will be working with the inspector general and a forensic auditor that we brought in that…came to Philadelphia on Friday to make sure we get to the bottom of this.”

WHYY’s Lizz Fiedler will have the full story for us later.