WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin (D-IL), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), and U.S. Representative Mike Bost (R-IL-12) today called on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to complete its investigation into the mismanagement at the Alexander County Housing Authority (ACHA) in Cairo, Illinois, as soon as possible and make its findings public. In a bipartisan letter to Acting Inspector General Helen Albert, the members warned that while the OIG’s investigation is ongoing, hundreds of tenants in Cairo are being forced out of their housing units due to years of negligence and mismanagement by ACHA administrators.
“For years, HUD sent letters to ACHA raising concerns about significant administrative problems being ignored by the executives. Yet, HUD turned a blind eye each time ACHA failed to resolve its significant problems. It was not until six months after The Southern Illinoisan newspaper brought to light the extraordinary extent of the ACHA mismanagement, beginning with the article ‘Chaos in Cairo,’ that HUD finally stepped in and took possession of the housing authority. HUD placed ACHA in receivership in February 2016, and has subsequently found conditions far worse than originally thought. Many of the housing units in Cairo are now uninhabitable and the tenants are being forced to move,” the members wrote. “It is absolutely necessary that the HUD OIG ensure that the investigation is transparent by making any findings of financial and administrative mismanagement available, at least to Congress, if not directly to the public.”
The full text of the letter is available here
