I’ll be fair — I’ve interviewed Housing Authority of Winston-Salem executive director Larry Woods and he seemed very sincere about fixing the criminal problems left behind by previous director Reid Lawrence and board chairman Ernie Pitt.
And it’s also not certain who’s responsible for this latest screw-up:
Woods said that HUD officials told him at the end of May that HAWS would be getting less money this year and that the cut was retroactive to January — meaning that for five months HAWS had been spending money it did not have.
HUD required HAWS to fill the gap with money it has in a reserve.
The reserve is from years in which HAWS has reached its cap of 4,100 vouchers but still has leftover money.
The problem, Woods said, is that HUD used a combination of databases to figure out how much money HAWS had in the reserve.
HUD calculated that HAWS had about $6 million, when the agency has $3.2 million in the reserve, Woods said.
Woods said that while HUD officials have admitted to him that they made a mistake, they have not fixed it.
What can I say —- this is government in the housing business.
