The missing loot is part of a highly questionable Housing and Urban Development (HUD) program that liberally doled out cash to Louisiana homeowners so they could elevate and protect their houses from storms. The feds came up with this brilliant idea after Hurricane Katrina slammed the region in 2005 because the area, especially New Orleans, got flooded.

Uncle Sam gave Louisiana officials tens of billions of dollars to help residents prepare for future hurricanes and $940.5 million went to a special Road Home Elevation Incentive program that liberally distributed cash to anyone who said they would “elevate” their home. The idea, apparently, was to protect houses from floods though the water level was so high after the storm that no home could have been sufficiently elevated.

Perhaps recipients knew this and figured “why bother?” More than 24,000 homeowners that received up to $30,000 each to elevate their homes pocketed the money instead of making the seemingly useless improvements. That means American taxpayers have been fleeced $700 million, according to an enraging HUD Inspector General report issued this week. No one really knows what happened to the money in fact HUD IG David Montoya admits “your guess is as good as mine.”

What we do know for certain is that the multi-million-dollar home elevation program was a complete failure that did nothing to protect against future hurricanes. This is hardly surprising considering the funds were so easily distributed with virtually no scrutiny. Local residents simply had to promise that they would “elevate and reoccupy” a home and use it as a primary residence within three years. The goal was to assist homeowners with the costs of repairing properties damaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Here is a brilliant idea from the HUD watchdog that apparently hasn’t occurred to the agency’s officials; try to recover some of the money by enforcing remedies for noncompliance in grant agreements. The state has detailed information on more than 15,000 homeowners who received elevation money that was never used to make the improvements. That translates into $437.3 million, the IG points out.

It’s unlikely this creates any sort of dilemma for a bloated agency like HUD that’s been plagued by mismanagement and a number of scandals—under both Democrat and Republican administrations—over the years. Under Ronald Reagan in the 1980s an influence-peddling scheme led to the conviction of 16 people, including top aides to then HUD Secretary Samuel Pierce.

In the 1990s Bill Clinton’s housing secretary, Henry Cisneros, was embroiled in a major scandal over hush money to a mistress. He eventually pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about payments to the woman. In the new millennium George W. Bush’s housing secretary, Alphonso Jackson, was ousted and federally investigated for enriching himself and his friends by giving them lucrative government contracts.

More recently HUD has come under fire for wasting taxpayer money on things like a housing discrimination application for mobile devices. The goal, according to HUD, is to provide the public with a quick and easy way to learn about housing rights and to facilitate the process of filing housing discrimination complaints. It also aims to remind the housing industry about its “responsibilities” under the Fair Housing Act, the 1968 law enacted to promote integrated housing—by combatting housing segregation—during the civil rights movement.

Financed by American taxpayers, the new housing discrimination app was developed by a special division inside the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with the help of a major information technology company headquartered in northern California. The Obama administration has not revealed specifics relating to costs, but Judicial Watch plans to request details from HUD involving the new app’s price tag and other relevant facts.

JW has been a leader in investigating HUD and it’s shenanigans to advance a blatantly leftwing agenda. Last fall JW sued HUD for records of the Obama administration’s meddling in a controversial Minnesota housing discrimination case involving a discredited legal standard known as “disparate impact.” Before that JW sued HUD to obtain records related to federal grants awarded to the scandal-plagued community organization (Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now—ACORN) that’s fleeced U.S. taxpayers out of millions.

The process involving the app will also be closely scrutinized. The goal, according to a HUD announcement, is to provide the public with a quick and easy way to learn about housing rights and to facilitate the process of filing housing discrimination complaints. It also aims to remind the housing industry about its “responsibilities” under the Fair Housing Act, the 1968 law enacted to promote integrated housing—by combatting housing segregation—during the civil rights movement.

Under both Democrat and Republican administrations HUD has failed to flex its muscle when it comes to discrimination against minorities, according to civil rights groups, and Obama vowed to change that when he moved into the White House. The president named an affordable housing advocate (Shaun Donovan) who specialized in housing vouchers and integration as HUD secretary and the agency quickly made desegregation its key focus. Leading the effort for Donovan is a civil rights attorney (John Trasvina) from a renowned leftist group, the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF).

Donovan has traveled the country blaming segregation, isolation and poverty on government. Under his tenure HUD has created a number of costly programs to right the wrong. Shortly after taking his cabinet position, Donovan outlined these goals in an agency report that explains how to “build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination.” It asserts that an inclusive community is one in which all people—regardless of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, age, disability or sexual orientation—have access to the same housing, transportation, health, education and employment opportunities.

The new mobile app is simply the latest of many programs to help fulfill this mission. Several “civil rights advocacy organizations” will join forces with HUD to spread the word about the new mobile app and help “individuals pursue their housing rights.” This will equip minorities throughout the nation with the information they need to “combat housing discrimination,” according to an assistant HUD secretary in charge of fair housing and equal opportunity.

Known as Choice Neighborhoods, the costly enterprise is a centerpiece of the president’s interagency Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. This is described by the administration as collaboration between the Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Education, Justice, Treasury and Health and Human Services (HHS) to support the ability of local leaders from the public and private sectors and attract the private investment needed to transform distressed neighborhoods.

Those who care to read between the lines may conclude that this requires big bucks. After all, transforming “distressed” (crime-infested) neighborhoods into desirable middle-class areas can’t be cheap. The proof is in the pudding, or rather the government’s own ledger. Since Obama launched his brilliant Choice Neighborhoods project, it has received north of $236 million, including $110 million in fiscal year 2012. Like many of the president’s initiatives, a chunk of the cash has gone to leftist nonprofits and community groups.  

Logic would lead most to conclude that the administration views Choice Neighborhoods as successful or it wouldn’t keep pouring huge sums of taxpayer dollars into it. So why dole out an additional half a million in research grants to study it? It’s unlikely that any of the grant recipients who will conduct the studies will determine that it’s a waste or a miserable failure, considering Uncle Sam is cutting the checks on both ends.

A high-ranking official at HUD, the agency doling out the cash to conduct the studies, says the grants demonstrate a “commitment to sound research to help gauge the program’s overall success and cultivate the most promising approaches to making the greatest possible impact.” This doesn’t sound all that convincing considering all the money that has already been allotted to the revitalization program.

Let’s check out some of the study recipients; a public university in Washington State will get close to $200,000 to develop an advanced administrative database that provides information about the residents of a Seattle public housing community and its surrounding neighborhood. Another public university in northern California will get $131,148 to research the challenges of brining healthy food options to poor neighborhoods and a Portland college will get close to $77,000 to collect data the characteristics of the neighborhoods being targeted for transformation in the first place.

Furthermore, Uncle Sam must keep doling out the cash for this noble cause, according to the government’s own findings. This seems to be a response to coming under fire for pouring huge sums of taxpayer dollars into the coffers of leftwing community groups that help minorities seeking a good home or struggling to keep one on the verge of foreclosure. In the last few months alone, the nonprofits have received $42 million.

Among them are hundreds of national, regional and local organizations like the powerful open borders group with close ties to the president, the National Council of La Raza (NCLR). Earlier this year the NCLR, whose federal funding has skyrocketed since one of its top officials got a job on the Obama White House, got nearly $2 million to help combat predatory lending, train poor Latinos about financial literacy and help them become homeowners.

The National Community Reinvestment Corporation, a famously liberal activist group that seeks to eliminate “discrimination” in housing and mortgage lending, and the equally leftist National Urban League, which advocates for social justice and claims voter identification laws are racist also got a chunk of change this year. The first group received $2.5 million from Uncle Sam and the second got $1.05 million.

The money couldn’t go to a better cause, according to a pair of studies financed by American taxpayers to justify the waste. The first is documented in a 197-page report titled “Foreclosure Counseling Outcome Study” and the second in a 91-page “Pre-Purchase Counseling Outcome Study.” Nearly 70% of those who received housing counseling were able to avoid foreclosure, according to the first report and pre-purchase counseling really helped a “diverse group of low- to moderate-income individuals obtain useful information” that led to home ownership.

In short, “housing counseling significantly improved the likelihood homeowners remained in their homes” according to a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) press release announcing the reports this month. The announcement is appropriately titled “HUD Studies Show Housing Counseling Helps Families Prepare for Home Ownership and Keep the Homes They Have.”

The key phrase comes via HUD’s Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research, Raphael Bostic: “These two studies underscore the need to continue supporting housing counseling programs across this country, especially during this period when families need these services the most.” He continues: “The evidence is clear, with a little investment on the front end, we can go a long way toward improving the chances families will buy a home they can afford and sustain their homes in the long run.”

It’s definitely a new era of government spending. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is allocating $20 million to “improve performance and boost the capacity of state and local governments to implement their federal block grant programs for housing and community development.” In this case the cash will support “technical assistance” projects that guide local governments trying to “stabilize” in the aftermath of the foreclosure crisis.

The money will go to three types of “results-oriented technical assistance and capacity building,” according to HUD; comprehensive assistance to help grantees improve their basic program performance; limited assistance to grantees that have clearly identified program gaps; and innovative assistance to help grantees in restructuring their housing and community development programs to better meet the needs in their communities.

“These funds will help our partners work smarter and stretch federal investments for the greatest possible benefit to the people and places we serve,” said Mercedes Márquez, HUD’s Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development.  “In today’s budget environment, we not only have to do more with less, we have to perform at a very high level to make certain limited taxpayer dollars have the real and lasting impact.”

Eligible applicants include state or local governments, public housing authorities, nonprofit community groups, educational institutions, Indian tribes, for-profit organizations, public or private organizations and other “intermediaries.” In other words, pretty much anyone can qualify for this particular grant.

That’s because the agency has made a “fundamental change” in the way its traditional “program-specific” technical assistance has been structured. It will be replaced with a new “cross-program” approach. What does this all mean? Nobody really knows since it’s purposely written in a mystic government lingo so regular people can’t truly understand it.

What we do know is that HUD has initiated a number of controversial programs under the Obama Administration. Last fall the agency launched a special initiative to help illegal immigrants nationwide and it intervened against Arizona’s strict immigration control law by warning that federal housing obligations prohibit “discrimination against protected class members.” HUD also deployed its assistance secretary to intercept a Fremont Nebraska measure banning illegal aliens from renting in its jurisdiction.

HUD has also been embroiled in a huge scandal surrounding federal grants awarded to the famously corrupt Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN). In 2009 Judicial Watch sued the agency for the records and in 2010 a HUD Inspector General report revealed that ACORN embezzled millions of dollars for “housing counseling” in one year alone and destroyed the documents to hide the fraud.