Department of Housing and Urban Development officials blocked inspections of Memphis slums kept in “deplorable conditions,” even though they were subsidized with more than $60 million in federal tax funds, according to a senator’s new report.
HUD awarded more than $60 million in subsidies to the Global Ministries Foundation last year to provide housing through two Memphis apartment complexes, but the units were infested and decrepit, according to Wastebook: The Farce Awakens – a new report by Sen. [crscore]Jeff Flake[/crscore] that was made public Tuesday.
“Federal officials blocked safety inspections of public housing in Tennessee owned by a slumlord who has been collecting millions of dollars in taxpayer money while his residents have been living in deplorable conditions with broken pipes, exposed electrical sockets and infestation with roaches, bedbugs and rodents,” the report said.
“Nobody should be living like that in housing, especially that the taxpayers have helped build and are helping to maintain,” said Tennessee Housing Development Agency Executive Director Ralph Perrey, according to the report.
The Arizona Republican’s new report – a continuation of former Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn’s original Wastebook – describes 100 examples of misused tax dollars.
Global Ministries Foundation President and CEO Reverend Richard Hamlet was paid $485,000 and “60 percent of GMF’s spending paid for salaries with less than 20 percent spent on missionary work, according to an analysis by an investigative reporter,” the report said.
But HUD barred the Tennessee Housing Development Agency from inspecting properties that fall under the federal department’s Section 8 program.
“HUD last sent code inspectors to the property in 2010 and HUD officials in Washington, D.C. have blocked the state from conducting its own safety inspections,” the Wastebook said.
Both apartment complexes, which include more than 600 units total, failed federal inspections once HUD “finally stopped blocking inspections after the local media exposed the appalling conditions of the residents,” the report said.
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