Public and Assisted Housing Oversight
Investment ID: 025-000004360
Overview
Program Title
Public and Assisted Housing Oversight
Description
This investment provides systems that ensure public and HUD assisted housing comply with applicable laws and regulations. It provides accurate, credible and reliable information to assess the condition and financial management of HUD supported properties and ultimately improve the nation's stock of affordable housing. HUD is modernizing outdated systems and automating manual processes used in providing this essential mission function.
Type of Program
Major IT Investments
Multi-Agency Category
Not Applicable
Investment Detail
Most of the legislative mandates for the investment require that the information exchanged between the Public Housing Agencies and Multifamily property owner/agents be performed electronically. The investments automation of the legislative mandates through IT applications results in both direct and indirect returns on investment. Direct savings, reducing number of federal or contract staff, software and hardware licensing costs and are typically smaller than those achieved by improvements to the business s efficiency. Indirectly this investment allows the housing assistance programs areas to achieve improvements in the number of families housed, costs saved, and costs avoided.
The investment has achieved direct return on investment by reducing hardware and system software costs through decommissioning applications and migration to EA platforms. Additional direct returns have been achieved in reducing application maintenance costs through shared services, common software development life cycle processes and procedures and automation of software development activities.
Strengthening the physical inspection process with photographs of deficiencies reduces both internal and business partner staff costs by significantly decreasing the number of appeals. Sharing of physical inspection with IRS and USDA reduces the overall number of inspections needing to be performed, minimizing the disruption to the tenants and costs to our business partners.
The investment has achieved indirect return on investments. As part of the Information as a Service solution, tracking unit occupancy allowed Public Housing Agencies to increase the occupancy rate from 92.4% to 95.8% in just over two years. This translates into approximately 35,000 more families being housed and helping the Department towards meeting Subgoal 2B: Expand the supply of affordable rental homes where they are most needed. The Information as a Service solution also allowed Public Housing Agencies with better forecasting of their voucher utilization as part of the Section 8 voucher program. The PHAs were able to increase the utilization of the program s appropriated dollars by approximately 1%, or $170 million, and thereby assist 20,000 more families that would otherwise have been homeless.
The investment has achieved direct return on investment by reducing hardware and system software costs through decommissioning applications and migration to EA platforms. Additional direct returns have been achieved in reducing application maintenance costs through shared services, common software development life cycle processes and procedures and automation of software development activities.
Strengthening the physical inspection process with photographs of deficiencies reduces both internal and business partner staff costs by significantly decreasing the number of appeals. Sharing of physical inspection with IRS and USDA reduces the overall number of inspections needing to be performed, minimizing the disruption to the tenants and costs to our business partners.
The investment has achieved indirect return on investments. As part of the Information as a Service solution, tracking unit occupancy allowed Public Housing Agencies to increase the occupancy rate from 92.4% to 95.8% in just over two years. This translates into approximately 35,000 more families being housed and helping the Department towards meeting Subgoal 2B: Expand the supply of affordable rental homes where they are most needed. The Information as a Service solution also allowed Public Housing Agencies with better forecasting of their voucher utilization as part of the Section 8 voucher program. The PHAs were able to increase the utilization of the program s appropriated dollars by approximately 1%, or $170 million, and thereby assist 20,000 more families that would otherwise have been homeless.