Taxpayers Spend $40 Million Each Year on a Housing Project That’s Plagued by Mold, Missing Locks, Exposed Wiring

A taxpayer-funded housing project in Memphis has a host of dangerous safety violations, including problems with mold, exposed electrical wiring and missing locks, among countless other things.

The long-troubled housing project is the subject of a new audit from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general. The Memphis Housing Authority receives $40 million in annual government funding, according to the audit.

Auditors inspected 90 program units and found major violations with 77 of them.

“The excessive violations occurred because the authority’s quality control inspection program did not effectively detect that its inspectors lacked sufficient knowledge of HUD’s housing quality standards and missed opportunities to improve inspector performance,” the audit went on.

“Unless the authority improves its inspection program and ensures that all of its units materially meet minimum housing quality standards, we estimate that over the next year, HUD will pay about $34 million in housing assistance for units in material noncompliance with the standards.”

HUD officials in Memphis, Atlanta and Washington, D.C., didn’t return several requests for comment.

HUD classified the housing authority as “severely troubled” in 1999 and threatened to take over the program, the audit said.

That finding prompted the Memphis Housing Authority to outsource the 5,800-unit program to the Washington, D.C.-based Quadel Consulting Corp., a private company, in 2000. Quadel’s current contract expires next year.

Government inspectors also reported finding missing handrails on porches, poor yard maintenance, missing window locks, improperly installed water heater lines and rotting window frames in the units, among other violations.

In their defense, Memphis officials said in the audit that inspectors turned in a faulty report and complained they didn’t get enough federal money.

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