Serenity Towers Apartments in Memphis, Tennessee, is a senior living facility subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and managed by Millennia Housing Management, an LLC landlord. Over the past few years, Serenity Towers’ seniors have lived with no hot water, bedbugs, mold, broken elevators, unfair evictions, and scorching temperatures without air conditioning. Last summer, poor living conditions prompted Tennessee state judge Patrick Dandridge to call on Serenity Towers to find temporary housing for residents without hot water or AC. However, with no openings at other HUD properties, residents continued to occupy the faulty building.

That same summer, Serenity Towers passed its HUD inspection by two points.

How could such a clearly defective building pass inspection? Simple. HUD doesn’t have enough staff to properly inspect the buildings it subsidizes. As a result, HUD ends up running counter to its mandate by placing thousands of people in unsafe housing. The national housing shortage, exacerbated by the pandemic and the increase in extreme weather events, has only worsened the strain on HUD’s stretched resources. Nationwide, rents went up 65.7 percent between 2000 and 2021.

Since 2000, HUD has lost an astonishing 30 percent of its full-time staff. Capacity issues were compounded during the Trump years, when then-Secretary Ben Carson called for deep spending cuts. HUD cut its budget by 19.5 percent between the 2017 and 2019 fiscal years, slashing funding for public and Indian housing programs, fair housing and equal opportunity programs, and more.

A chronically underfunded and understaffed HUD cannot adequately oversee rental assistance, compliance with fair housing laws, disaster relief, and other key programs. This is clear from HUD’s years of failing to quickly address housing discrimination complaints, distribute vouchers for homeless veterans, and more. There are plenty of problems built into our housing laws, to be sure, but without adequate staff, HUD can’t even enforce the good rules that are on the books already.

Other government agencies face similar issues.

Read the full article about agencies suffering from lack of staff and funding by Fatou Ndiaye at Democracy Journal.