Biden-Era HUD Sent $5.8B to 30,054 Dead Recipients – 200,000 Tenants Exposed

Over 30,000 deceased individuals collected federal rental assistance checks throughout 2024 while the Biden administration distributed nearly $50 billion in housing aid with minimal oversight.

Internal auditors at the Department of Housing and Urban Development uncovered approximately $5.8 billion in questionable payments—representing 11.6 percent of total expenditures—flowing to dead tenants, ineligible non-citizens, and households earning far above income limits.

What the Federal Audit Revealed

HUD released its Fiscal Year 2025 Agency Financial Report in December 2024, employing advanced data analytics for the first time to examine every rental assistance payment made during the year. Officials compared housing records against U.S.

Treasury databases, identifying between 29,715 and 30,054 deceased individuals receiving payments across all 50 states. The comprehensive review also flagged 9,472 non-citizens and more than 165,000 households exceeding income eligibility thresholds.​

Breaking Down the Payment Failures

The questionable payments originated from two massive federal programs: Tenant-Based Rental Assistance, which distributed $33 billion to four million households, and Project-Based Rental Assistance, which spent $16 billion on property-based subsidies.

TBRA showed eligibility concerns tied to approximately $1.5 billion in payments. PBRA raised red flags on roughly $4.3 billion—a staggering 26.4 percent of all funds distributed through that program during fiscal year 2024.​

Geographic Concentration in Three Major Jurisdictions

Large concentrations of suspected improper housing payments appeared in New York, California, and Washington, D.C., though deceased tenant payments occurred nationwide.

Minnesota alone received up to $84 million in ineligible assistance during 2024, including $496,000 sent to 509 confirmed dead tenants. The geographic patterns suggest systemic verification failures in jurisdictions with the largest rental assistance programs and highest population densities.​

Material Weakness Disclosed After Internal Review

After identifying critical process gaps, HUD disclosed a material weakness in its financial reporting—an unprecedented acknowledgment that internal controls failed to prevent or detect material misstatements.

This marked the first time HUD’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer used comprehensive data analytics rather than statistical sampling to examine all payments. The disclosure represented unusual transparency about systemic failures during the presidential transition.​

Eleven Years of Noncompliance with Federal Law

The $5.8 billion revelation culminates a decade of payment integrity failures at HUD. The department has been noncompliant with federal improper payment laws for 11 consecutive years, failing to produce required estimates for its two largest rental assistance programs for eight straight years through fiscal year 2024.

When HUD last reported compliant estimates in 2016, officials identified approximately $1.7 billion in improper payments from $30.7 billion in total expenditures.​

How Rental Assistance Programs Actually Work

HUD doesn’t directly administer housing assistance. Instead, approximately 2,756 Public Housing Agencies nationwide assess tenant eligibility, verify applicant income and household composition, determine subsidy amounts, and make direct payments to landlords.

Performance-Based Contract Administrators handle project-based assistance similarly. This delegation structure—placing responsibility on thousands of non-federal entities—created significant oversight challenges and verification gaps.​

Data Collection Barriers Hampered Oversight Efforts

HUD’s inability to produce improper payment estimates stemmed from failure to collect necessary supporting documentation. In 2017, officials discontinued quality control contractor studies and attempted collecting data directly from housing agencies without adequate planning.

The previous contractor had hired 73 field interviewers and created over 30 automated data collection instruments. When HUD tried handling this internally, the department lacked resources and secure platforms.​

Critical Database Connection Allowed to Lapse

HUD allowed its data-sharing agreement with Treasury’s Do Not Pay system to lapse in 2019. This system specifically helps federal agencies prevent improper payments to deceased individuals, debarred contractors, and other ineligible recipients through automated checks against multiple death databases.

The lapsed agreement eliminated a key safeguard designed to flag payments continuing to dead beneficiaries before funds were disbursed.​

Secretary Places Blame on Biden Administration Policies

HUD Secretary Scott Turner released a strongly worded statement accompanying the report: “A massive abuse of taxpayer dollars not only occurred under President Biden’s watch, but was effectively incentivized by his administration’s failure to implement strong financial controls resulting in billions worth of potential improper payments.”

Turner characterized the findings as resulting from directives prioritizing rapid distribution over verification.​

Report Attributes Failures to Speed-Over-Safety Directive

The HUD financial report stated: “The directive from the Biden Administration to push funding out the door with minimal oversight” placed substantial trust in non-federal entities without adequate verification mechanisms.

According to the report, “The Biden Administration did not provide HUD with effective tools, technology, or access to the evidence necessary to verify whether these entities were properly enforcing the intricate rules governing rental assistance”.​

Investigation and Accountability Measures Announced

Turner pledged HUD would “continue investigating the shocking results and will take appropriate action to hold bad actors accountable.” Officials announced plans to contact housing authorities and partners to determine the full scope of improper payments.

Depending on findings, the department may pause or revoke funding and refer cases for criminal prosecution. New tracking processes will monitor how agencies spend federal funds.​

Inspector General Had Warned of Fundamental Flaws

The HUD Office of Inspector General repeatedly criticized the department’s approach to payment integrity.

A January 2024 management alert stated “OCFO’s approach to improper payments is fundamentally flawed” because it failed to develop methods testing payments made directly by Public Housing Agencies to landlords. The Inspector General emphasized this payment stage represents where the greatest risk to payment integrity occurs.​

Government-Wide Improper Payment Crisis Continues

HUD’s failures exist within broader federal challenges. According to the Government Accountability Office, 16 federal agencies made approximately $162 billion in improper payments across 68 programs during fiscal year 2024.

Between fiscal years 2004 and 2023, federal agencies reported approximately $2.7 trillion in cumulative improper payments. Five programs consistently account for roughly 75 percent of all improper federal payments.​

Fraud Versus Administrative Errors Remain Unclear

The HUD report identifies questionable payments but doesn’t distinguish between intentional fraud, administrative errors by housing agencies, data quality issues, or legitimate recipients whose documentation failed requirements.

Several scenarios could explain payments to deceased tenants: deaths occurring between annual recertifications, notification lag time, family members failing to report deaths, administrative processing errors, or actual fraudulent collection by individuals using deceased persons’ identities.​

Emergency Rental Assistance Offers Contrasting Example

The comparison to Emergency Rental Assistance during COVID-19 proves instructive. Treasury administered over $45 billion in ERA, assisting approximately 10 million renters while explicitly easing verification rules to allow self-attestation.

Despite deliberate trade-offs favoring speed over extensive verification, available data suggests fraud remained relatively rare. Thurston County, Washington—the only county nationwide forced to return funds—confirmed fraud totaling approximately $668,000, representing 1.2 percent of distributed funds.​

Complex Eligibility Rules Challenge Verification

Public Housing Agencies must verify multiple eligibility factors and conduct annual recertifications. Requirements include third-party income verification from employers and benefit programs, household composition documentation with Social Security verification, citizenship status confirmation, income limit compliance based on Area Median Income, and criminal background checks.

Documentation must be recent, with many agencies requiring verification less than 120 days old.​

Payment Integrity Versus Program Access Trade-Offs

The findings raise fundamental questions about balancing payment integrity controls with ensuring rapid housing assistance access for vulnerable populations.

Strengthening verification requirements could increase administrative costs and processing times, create barriers for eligible households lacking standard documentation, reduce landlord participation in programs, and potentially decrease total households served. Emergency programs during COVID-19 deliberately prioritized speed despite accepting elevated fraud risks.​

Immediate Actions Required to Restore Safeguards

HUD should immediately reinstate data-sharing agreements with Treasury’s Do Not Pay system to enable automated checking of rental assistance payments against death records.

Officials should implement payment integration ensuring all assistance processed through federal systems undergoes automated pre-payment and post-payment checks. Rather than broad funding cuts to housing agencies, HUD should prioritize targeted investigations of specific high-risk indicators and patterns.​

Systemic Reforms Needed Beyond Individual Accountability

Effective reform requires distinguishing between actual fraud requiring prosecution, administrative errors addressable through improved systems and training, and policy decisions about balancing integrity with accessibility.

Long-term solutions include establishing an improper payment council with senior officials across the department, developing feasible testing methodology accounting for necessary resources, modernizing data systems enabling secure documentation collection, and resuming regular monitoring reviews of housing agencies suspended since 2021.