On Wednesday, the GHURA board of directors unanimously voted to write off $820,289.37 in unpaid rent they are unable to collect, dating back to Fiscal Year 2000. 

“These are accounts where through the due diligence of Section 8, we caught the fraud and demanded repayment,” said GHURA Deputy Director Fernando Esteves. 

Esteves explained a significant amount, or $792,198.79, is due to Section 8 tenant fraud, like unreported income, and improper payments to landlords.

“It’s important to make the distinction that there are those tenants who, maybe they pick up a job or have unreported income and unintentionally failed to report versus those intentionally hiding money or hiding income they’re making to try to reduce the payment,” added Esteves. 

Esteves says it’s 25 years worth of write-offs that’s “resetting the clock” on their books. 

GHURA Executive Director Elizabeth Napoli admits she was alarmed when she first saw the numbers, but in perspective.

“Had it been reported quarterly of each year, it would have been an average of $5000 in write-offs that they would have asked every quarter for each of those years. So I think it’s just the fact that 25 years later, the total amount just seems really high,” said Napoli. 

Esteves adds the loss is “a drop in the ocean,” or less than one percent of the $43 million a year in subsidies GHURA receives. 

“If it were a larger amount, we’d obviously be flagged by HUD, and there’d be serious, you know, there’d be workout plans and things like that,” said Esteves. 

The high receivables were flagged in 2022 after an audit. 

Efforts have been made to try to get the former tenants to pay in court but failed due to the statute of limitations. 

Since then, esteves says they’ve updated their process to “more vigorously go after issues of fraud or improper payments, and not wait.”