Department Of Housing And Urban Development U S

The Senate voted Monday to block the Housing and Urban Development Department from giving grants to ACORN, a community organization under fire in voter-registration fraud cases. The 83-7 vote came as ACORN , which stands for the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is receiving bad publicity related to surreptitious videos. Two conservative activists posed as a prostitute and her pimp, then released a hidden-camera video in which ACORN employees in Baltimore advised the couple on house-buying and how to account for the woman's income on tax forms.

Federal auditors have called for the ouster of the Los Angeles County Housing Authority's director, saying his agency has not properly administered the $200 million federal housing voucher program for the county's poor and has sought to conceal its shortcomings. The unusual recommendations come in a report this month that criticizes the authority for failing to check annually, as required, on tenants' eligibility for subsidies under the federal Section 8 program.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is circulating to lawmakers proposed rules that would force lenders to make more accurate estimates of home mortgage costs, make disclosures easier to understand and reveal payments made to mortgage brokers. The proposal is a toned-down version of changes put forward by HUD in 2002 but dropped two years later because of furious opposition from mortgage brokers and some lawmakers.

President Bush said Friday he would nominate Steven C. Preston, the head of the Small Business Administration, to take over the Department of Housing and Urban Development at a time when the housing industry is in turmoil. If confirmed by the Senate, Preston would replace Alphonso Jackson, who announced his resignation March 31 amid a criminal investigation into allegations of favoritism in awarding contracts.

Already battered by budget deficits and service cuts, the city of Los Angeles stands to lose nearly $8 million a year in federal funds that pay for healthcare centers at housing projects, summer job programs for at-risk youths and housing and services for poor people, officials said.

Federal regulators have sued Coldwell Banker, Prudential and other real estate giants, contending that their brokers took kickbacks for steering Californians to a company that reports on earthquake and other hazards for homes being sold. Brokers got $25 out of each $100 fee that the company, Property I.D., charged home sellers for creating a report, according to the suit filed Thursday in federal court.

City officials announced Thursday that long-standing financial deficiencies in a rental assistance program for homeless families have been corrected, bringing to a close a 2006 federal audit that identified the trouble. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development notified the city's Housing Authority last week that it had resolved 10 problems with the Shelter Plus Care program, including a failure to develop procedures for managing rental assistance funds provided by HUD.

ABN Amro Mortgage Group Inc. has agreed to a $41-million settlement with the federal government for falsifying documents in tens of thousands of loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said. In 2003, the department discovered underwriting deficiencies and improper conduct by an ABN employee.

An inspector general is investigating Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson's comments to a business group that he rejected an advertising contract because the contractor had criticized President Bush. "We have received a number of complaints from the public as well as from members of Congress," Michael Zerega, spokesman for HUD's inspector general, said Friday. "We are reviewing this matter and will look to the facts and any applicable law or requirements."

It may have been a hoax, but an announcement Monday that the federal government was reversing course and reopening public housing projects it had slated for demolition exposed a fault line in this city's efforts to recover from Hurricane Katrina. Onstage at an investors' conference with Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin, an impostor claiming to be an assistant secretary of the U.S.