California Agency Didn’t Properly Distribute COVID Relief Funds For Homeless, Audit Finds

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A California bureau didn’t decently administer national alleviation funds meant to assistance stateless residents during the coronavirus pandemic, and the mismanagement was truthful prolonged that section organizations whitethorn suffer the wealth due to the fact that of missed deadlines, auditors said Tuesday.

After receiving $316 cardinal nether the national CARES Act to trim the interaction of COVID-19 connected unhoused people, the California Department of Housing and Community Development “did not instrumentality captious steps to guarantee those funds promptly benefited that population,” the authorities auditor’s bureau said successful a report.

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The section was successful complaint of distributing the funds to section groups that collaborate connected stateless services and prevention nether the alleged continuum of care. It took truthful agelong to finalize contracts that the section entities did not person entree to overmuch of the backing during the tallness of the pandemic, auditors found.

“Recognizing it lacked the capableness to negociate this exigency funding, the section hired a contractor to negociate the programme though it did not bash truthful until 14 months aft the CARES Act passed” successful March 2020, the study said.

Because the section organizations did not person entree to the wealth successful a punctual manner, they whitethorn conflict to walk the afloat allocations wrong federally mandated clip frames and whitethorn suffer the funding, auditors concluded.

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“In the weeks and months pursuing the transition of the CARES Act, we expected the section to person taken each measurement imaginable to guarantee that timely entree and it did not,” the study said.

In addition, the section hasn’t collected captious accusation needed to measurement the effectiveness of the state’s usage of national funds to code homelessness, according to the report.

Department officials didn’t instantly respond to requests for comment. The auditor’s bureau said that portion the section powerfully disagrees with the findings, it plans to instrumentality the report’s recommendations, which includes processing a strategy to run much efficiently during emergencies.

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The study besides recommends that the section enactment intimately with section organizations to found a contingency program to reallocate unspent wealth to “ensure that the authorities maximizes the intended payment of this funding.”