Over decades, HUD has repeatedly suffered from staffing shortages. Multiple investigations from HUD’s Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) have shown that staffing shortages are consistently impeding the department’s ability to carry out its work. Despite an increase in recent years, staffing still lags far behind past levels. HUD’s enforcement power and ability to carry out federal programs that help Americans access “quality affordable homes” are weakened by current and sustained staffing shortages. The following is a list of the key reasons why HUD needs more staff:
- Combatting Discriminatory Housing Practices: Through the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity, HUD combats discriminatory housing practices for tenants and potential homeowners. As noted by Senator Elizabeth Warren in a recent letter to HUD, the office recorded a 32% decline in its staffing in the nine years prior to 2020. As noted in the Department’s FY 2021 Budget Request, this huge reduction in staffing led to “significant risks in the execution of FHEO programs that can be distilled down to five areas of acute need: Title VIII complaint investigations, Fair Housing compliance, including for the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) Program, and grant distribution and monitoring of the Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP) and the Fair Housing Assistance Program (FHAP).”
- Maintaining Access To Quality Public Housing: As of September 2024, approximately 2 million people in 1.2 million households are able to live in affordable homes through the Section 8 voucher program. HUD’s already-chronic under-staffing has meant that it has struggled to properly monitor the program that so many rely on: “Thanks to constricted personnel and funding, the public housing office has to use a less-thorough approach to monitoring potential abuses, making it more likely that things will slip through the cracks.”
- Overseeing Community Development Block Grants Contractors and Grantees: Monitoring grantees impacts Americans in important ways. Grantees include cities, counties and states which receive Community Development Block Grants aimed at providing affordable housing and ending homelessness. From 2014 to 2017, HUD OIG found that at least 21 audits of grants issued through HUD’s Office of Community Planning and Development “found little or no monitoring of the grantees.” In 2019, the office said it only monitored 13% of the grantees. In a memo outlining their management and performance challenges for 2025, HUD noted that it still has capacity shortages affecting its ability to “oversee grantees, contractors, and financial sector counterparties,” harming the Department’s ability to assess performance, effectiveness and compliance of these programs.
- Conducting Inspections To Ensure Public Housing Is Safe To Live In: HUD’s 2019 OIG report found that the agency was not properly monitoring the contractors that it hires to conduct examinations of HUD properties across the country. The Real Estate Assessment Center within HUD gave some buildings higher REAC scores than the physical condition warranted, leading to decreased oversight and less frequent inspections which in turn created unsafe, unsanitary living conditions.
- Overseeing Section 232 Residential Care Facilities: Amidst HUD’s intense staffing shortages in 2019, HUD’s OIG found that it was failing to oversee 18 “financially challenged” nursing homes that were receiving federal funding. Not only did this lead to the agency losing over $30 million on four defaulted mortgages, but it meant that elderly people had to live amidst “significant roof problems that caused leaks and water damage, poor quality of repairs performed by unskilled labor, and facilities that were neglected and generally run down.”
- Upgrading Slow Computer Systems: As of 2019, HUD was managing its “operations with legacy systems implemented between 1974 and 1995,” and cited a need for specialized staff who could set up and manage new computer systems. HUD noted in a FY 2025 memo that it still has capacity shortages which limit its ability to “provide high-touch technical assistance; and modernize its programs and IT systems.” Having newer technology would make HUD more effective, since the department would be able to implement more robust data analytics practices, as well as ensure they are mitigating the risk of cybersecurity attacks.