Skip to main content

Uncollected Rent Continues To Reduce Revenue for the District of Columbia

GGD-82-55 Published: May 20, 1982. Publicly Released: May 20, 1982.
Jump To:
Skip to Highlights

Highlights

GAO evaluated the District of Columbia's efforts to record, bill, and collect accounts receivable to determine whether the District is collecting all rents that should be collected and whether procedures, accounting methods, and collection actions are supporting the revenue effort.

Recommendations

Recommendations for Executive Action

Agency Affected Recommendation Status
District of Columbia The Mayor of the District of Columbia should direct the Department of Housing and Community Development to immediately institute procedures guaranteeing a timely and accurate automated tenant billing system and organized and easily accessible manual delinquent tenant files which can be used to verify the automated system.
Closed – Not Implemented
The Department of Housing and Community Develpment continues to work on the billing system but has not yet completed its efforts. GAO is currently looking at financial management systems throughout the D.C. Government, pursuant to a congressional request. The Department's automated billing system will be included in GAO review work, making further followup duplicative.
District of Columbia The Mayor of the District of Columbia should direct the Department of Housing and Community Development to begin taking prompt, aggressive, and consistent collection action against newly identified delinquent tenant accounts and initiate action to verify and collect amounts of delinquent rent due from older delinquent accounts on a prioritized case-by-case basis.
Closed – Implemented
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
District of Columbia The Mayor of the District of Columbia should direct the Department of Housing and Community Development to bring all urban renewal property tenant accounts up to date and require that the accounts be periodically reviewed to better ensure they are kept up to date.
Closed – Implemented
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
District of Columbia The Mayor of the District of Columbia should direct the Department of Housing and Community Development to establish and use uniform collection procedures for public housing and urban renewal tenants.
Closed – Not Implemented
The Department of Housing and Community Development's urban renewal program is now basically completed. Only a relatively few tenants remain, and the Department has begun systematic prosecution of non-payers, making conformance of URA procedures moot at this time.
District of Columbia The Mayor of the District of Columbia should direct the Department of Housing and Community Development to initiate legal action against urban renewal tenants where such action is appropriate and necessary to collect delinquent rent and establish and use procedures for eviction in appropriate cases.
Closed – Implemented
When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Full Report

Office of Public Affairs

Topics

Collection proceduresFinancial managementInformation systemsLate paymentsMunicipal governmentsPublic housingRecords managementRental housingTenantsUrban renewal