Federal HOME Program Suffers From Lack of Oversight

"Former city housing employee Jerry Kelly, who administered much of the program with Redemptive Life, said that current city staff might interpret some of HUD's rules differently from past staffers. Even HUD, he said, is constantly changing its interpretations.

'They'll interpret them differently from one year to the next; they are that cloudy,' Kelly said.

But in the past three years, 21 people nationwide have been criminally convicted of misusing money from the nearly $2 billion that HOME programs have received annually since at least 2004, according to congressional testimony."