The Houston Housing Authority's Sec- tion 8 program is in crisis. KTRK's 13 Undercover unit first found the problems, and now a $300,000 audit paid for by the housing authority confirms what they found. That audit recommends major changes, finding that half the authority's employees couldn't do sixth-grade math. Section 8 is supposed to provide safe, decent, and affordable housing to needy families by using tax dollars to subsidize rents.
It's a popular program in Houston, with more than 12,000 families partici- pating and a six-year waiting list. The gov- ernment spends millions of dollars this way in Houston every year. But 13 Undercover found many short- comings in how that money is spent, in- cluding questionable rents, shoddy living conditions and a landlord who collected nearly $10,000 in government rent checks for a house she didn't own.
The start The investigation started with a tip about a Section 8 slumlord. The tipster described unlivable conditions, an uncaring landlord, and an unresponsive Housing Authority. We decided to request some Section 8 data. The Housing Authority wanted to e-mail the data. We agreed, but soon ran into a snag. We knew Section 8 administrators didn't want to release their client's names. We didn't need names but needed addresses.
So, under the Texas Public Information Act, we asked for more than we needed - an elec- tronic record of all clients' names, addresses and rent amounts. As we expected, the Hous- ing Authority stuck to keeping the client's names private. Neither side wanted to take it to the Texas Attorney General. Putting it into a usable form was a challenge. The Housing Authority wanted to e-mail the data. We agreed, but soon ran into a snag.
The file was too big to pass through our firewall. So to downsize it, the authority broke it into parts. We cut and pasted it together. The database came in Microsoft Excel format, contain- ing a little more than 12,000 records. We paid a minimal amount. It took a few simple sorts to get our in- vestigation rolling. We first sorted by amount of rent. That gave us the highest rents and the lowest. Just by looking at a map and knowing the city, we had a good sense of what rents were out of line.
That's how we found the Housing Authority pay- ing $1,000 a month for a house when nearby properties were renting for about $350. Getting answers How did some rents get that far out of line? We asked for documentation of how the Housing Authority calculated rents. When we got the Rent Reasonableness Sur- veys, we got another story. The authority supposedly compares a property with three others that are similar in value, size and lo- cation.
But most of the time, properties were compared to just one other house. To compare values, we went online to our County Appraisal District (www.hcad.org). At that site, you just punch in an address, and get an appraised value. Then we checked the loca- tions on a map. By going though the top 20 highest Section 8 rents this way, we found one place compared to another worth five times as much. We also found houses compared to properties on the other side of town, and one house compared to a house that did not exist.
When we went to that $1,000-a-month house, we found what the data couldn't show. The place was a dump. We learned the Housing Authority kept simple inspection records in databases by year. Those records contained client number, ad- dress, date of inspection and results. We asked for those databases for 1999 and 2000. Both contained about 30,000 records. Instead of trying to squeeze those through the network, we got the Housing Authority to provide those to us on CD-ROM.
Once we got the tables, we combined the two for analysis. Again, we started looking at this data by doing a few simple sorts. But we did en- counter a few difficulties. These records were just plain unkempt. Many records were in- complete, and the data entry was very in- consistent. There were numerous misspell- ings, spaces in places where they didn't be- long, and some cells contained info clearly meant for other cells.
Manually fixing the problems was an option, but that would have taken a monumental effort. We decided to sort first and see what happened. Sorted by address, we noticed some properties had failed repeated inspections. We first sorted by address, That gave us a complete inspection history of every prop- erty for the last two years. The inspection records classify results as pass, fail, incon- clusive or vacant.
Sorted by address, we no- ticed some properties had failed repeated in- spections. In some cases, properties had failed seven inspections in a row, but the gov- ernment checks kept flowing. Still sorted by address, we found some houses that had multiple vacant or inconclu- sive inspections in a row. Some Section 8 cli- ents had moved out months ago, and yet the inspectors kept paying visits to vacant houses.
That's how we found the fraud. One house we visited with repeated vacant inspections had a new resident. And she was plenty mad at Section 8 for continuing to show up for inspections when she wasn't on Section 8. She had bought the house nearly a year before. We asked the Housing Authority for hardcopies of the corresponding Section 8 rent checks. It turned out the Section 8 landlord who used to own the house had been fraudu- lently collecting rent for two years after she sold it.
We also dumped all three tables into Microsoft Access on a laptop and linked the tables by client number. That proved useful when we went out to check out houses. We had rent amount and inspection history avail- able when we needed it for interviews and for asking questions of Section 8 administrators. Remember the tipster? We never did check out her house, but we did get it in- spected and fixed up.
After our stories, the Housing Authority inspected all the prop- erties in the program. About 25 percent of them failed. Those that failed received just days to fix the problems. Several inspectors were either disciplined or let go. Stephen Bivens can be reached by e- mail at Stephen.D.Bivens@abc.com