A federal audit has identified roughly $84.6 million in potentially improper housing assistance payments in Minnesota during fiscal year 2024, the final year of the Biden administration, according to findings released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Preliminary audit materials reviewed by HUD officials show that up to $496,000 was paid to 509 tenants listed as deceased, while another $246,000 went to 20 individuals whose Social Security numbers could not be verified, raising concerns that some recipients may have been ineligible for federal aid.
Scott Turner, the current HUD secretary, sharply criticized the prior administration’s oversight, telling The New York Post, “Biden’s HUD failed the people of Minnesota — paying dead people while vulnerable families were left behind.” He added, “This gross level of mismanagement and failure to safeguard American taxpayer dollars is unacceptable. Under President Trump’s leadership, we are holding bad actors accountable and will continue to root out rampant fraud in Minnesota and across the country.”
The questioned payments were distributed through 61 public housing authorities across Minnesota. While the audit described the payments as potentially erroneous, it emphasized that investigators have not yet fully confirmed instances of intentional fraud.
The Minnesota review is part of a broader national examination of federal rental assistance programs. Across the country, HUD flagged approximately $5.8 billion in questionable payments during the same fiscal period, from October 2023 through September 2024. The review identified aid provided to roughly 30,000 deceased tenants and thousands of individuals potentially classified as non-citizens, with irregularities affecting more than 200,000 tenants nationwide.
According to HUD’s analysis, about 11 percent of the reviewed funding went to possibly ineligible recipients. Of those flagged, 29,715 were listed as potentially deceased (14 percent), 9,472 as non-citizens (4 percent), and 165,393 received payments exceeding geographic eligibility thresholds (82 percent). While problematic payments were most heavily concentrated in states such as New York and California and in Washington, D.C., HUD officials noted that deceased recipients appeared in all 50 states.
The funding under review primarily involved Tenant-Based Rental Assistance, which distributed roughly $33 billion nationwide to more than 4 million households through housing vouchers, as well as Project-Based Rental Assistance, which accounted for an additional $16 billion in HUD programs.
The Minnesota findings also come amid separate federal investigations into fraud within the state’s social service programs, including Medicaid-related housing assistance, probes that have generated political fallout and contributed to former Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s decision not to seek a third term. The governor has been called to testify before Congress over his role in the incidents of fraud in his state.
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Ah what’s a ‘bit’ of fraud here or waste there when ya can get the ‘big guy cut’ or acquire enough extra votes to ‘win’ an election. We certainly can’t expect free and fair elections can we, never mind funding overseas misadventures.