Tim Redmond : 48hills – excerpt
Audit shows Mayor’s Office of Housing lacks transparency—and can’t explain a huge surplus
The Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community development is sitting on roughly half a billion dollars that could be spent on immediate housing needs, a new audit shows.
And that doesn’t count another close to $200 million in annual tax money earmarked for housing that the mayor has diverted to other uses…
In a city with a notorious lack of affordable housing, we have a department, nested under the Mayor’s Office, that does not follow reporting rules, has highly-politicized decision making, and, with an apparent balance of nearly a half billion dollars, can’t even tell us how much money is committed and how much isn’t.…(more)