Please Follow us on Gab, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, Gettr, Truth Social, Twitter
The U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) says the Biden administration “effectively incentivized” a “massive abuse of taxpayer dollars” in more than $5 billion in housing payments to nearly 30,000 “deceased tenants” and “thousands” of potential non-citizens.
“A massive abuse of taxpayer dollars not only occurred under President Biden’s watch, but was effectively incentivized by his administration’s failure to implement strong financial controls resulting in billions’ worth of potential improper payments,” said Secretary Scott Turner in a statement introducing HUD’s Fiscal Year 2025 (FY25) Agency Financial Report (AFR) to Congress.
“HUD will continue investigating the shocking results and will take appropriate action to hold bad actors accountable,” Turner said. “Additionally, the Department is advancing efforts made under President Trump’s first administration to strengthen program integrity and ensure taxpayer-funded assistance serves the vulnerable communities it was intended for.”
According to the report, HUD engaged in “an extensive review” of the agency’s internal processes that ultimately found “significant gaps in governance and accountability, and revealed an erosion of the control environment under the Biden administration.”
HUD financial officers “confirmed that many critical controls were either absent or ineffective, resulting in heightened risk exposure,” the report observed, adding that the federal agency has “already developed a detailed remediation plan and will begin implementation immediately to improve HUD’s financial internal controls and governing oversight.”
HUD programs are intended to assist low-income residents unable to secure shelter. But, as the New York Post reported Tuesday, during Fiscal Year 2024, approximately 11% of HUD taxpayer dollars were given to more than 200,000 potentially ineligible tenants “of whom 29,715 (around 14%) were dead, 9,472 (4%) were non-citizens and 165,393 (82%) were receiving sums that exceeded the threshold for assistance in their geographic region, particularly in New Orleans and other large metro areas.”
In a December 26 op-ed at Fox News, Turner flipped the Democrats’ anti-Trump “affordable housing” narrative back on them, by bringing the receipts on how “foreign-born migrants accounted for two-thirds of growth in rental demand.”
“Some places, such as California and New York, saw a 100% growth in migrant-fueled rental demand,” he asserted, adding that “[o]utrageously, some illegals even received HUD’s housing help, siphoning taxpayer dollars away from American citizens.”
“We cut off illegals from receiving FHA-insured mortgages and announced a hotline to report illegal residents in HUD housing, along with other criminals, because public housing must be safe housing,” the secretary wrote. “We are taking decisive action to ensure HUD-funded programs and resources are not benefiting ineligible individuals or illegals.”
The HUD report is yet another example of Democrats continuing to blame the one-year-old Trump administration for a lack of “affordability,” when it is their own governing and accountability failures – and “systematic fraud,” as Turner also posted – that have caused Americans who are truly in need of assistance to be left to the wayside.
In a statement within the report, Irving L. Dennis, HUD’s Principal Deputy Chief Financial Officer, said his focus is “protecting taxpayer dollars from fraud, waste, and abuse by improving transparency and accountability of how taxpayer funds are being spent by our grantees and Public Housing Authorities.”
“We need better information on where and how taxpayer funds are being spent once it leaves HUD, and restoring strong financial controls, which deteriorated under the Biden Administration,” he added.
Stay updated with the latest in the Constitution State with The CT Centinal
