Patriot Brief

• Department of Housing and Urban Development flagged nearly $6 billion in questionable rental assistance payments.

• Tens of thousands of payments allegedly went to deceased or ineligible recipients.

• Officials say weak oversight during the Joe Biden administration enabled systemic abuse.

At some point, the word “mistake” stops applying. When nearly $6 billion in housing aid goes to people who can’t be verified — including more than 30,000 who are literally dead — you’re no longer dealing with clerical errors. You’re dealing with a federal system that wasn’t being watched, wasn’t being checked, and apparently wasn’t expected to justify itself to anyone.

This wasn’t buried in some obscure program. Rental assistance is one of the largest line items in HUD’s budget, touching millions of households and tens of billions of dollars. And yet, under the Biden administration, basic eligibility checks either failed outright or were treated as optional. Deceased tenants stayed on the rolls. Citizenship status went unverified. Billions flowed anyway.

That doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when accountability is treated as an inconvenience and oversight is replaced with slogans about compassion. Real compassion doesn’t involve lighting taxpayer money on fire while the system shrugs.

What makes this worse is that the problem wasn’t isolated to one state or one city. The questionable payments were spread across all 50 states, with heavy concentrations in deep-blue strongholds where scrutiny is often treated as hostility. That’s not coincidence. That’s culture.

HUD Secretary Scott Turner is right to call this systematic. When dead people are receiving benefits, the system is either broken beyond recognition or being deliberately abused. Either way, pretending this is normal is no longer an option.

If this administration is serious about restoring trust, criminal referrals aren’t “political.” They’re the bare minimum. Anything less just confirms what taxpayers already suspect: nobody was minding the store, and everyone else was expected to pay for it.

From Western Journal:

A newly released report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that billions of taxpayer dollars were routed to ineligible recipients — including deceased individuals — through federal rental assistance programs during the Biden administration.

HUD’s internal review flagged approximately $5.8 billion in rental assistance payments made in fiscal year 2024 as “questionable” out of nearly $50 billion distributed nationwide. The funds went to more than 200,000 tenants whose eligibility could not be verified or appeared to violate program rules, including tens of thousands of individuals listed as deceased and thousands of possible non-citizens.

“A massive abuse of taxpayer dollars not only occurred under President Biden’s watch, but was effectively incentivized by his administration’s failure to implement strong financial controls resulting in billions worth of potential improper payments,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said in a statement to the New York Post.

Of the 8.8 million tenant records analyzed, roughly 200,000 could not be confirmed as U.S. citizens or as having an eligible non-citizen status. The agency also identified approximately 30,054 deceased individuals actively enrolled in a rental assistance program at the time of the analysis or who had received assistance after they died.

Between October 2023 and September 2024, HUD spent about $33 billion on Tenant-Based Rental Assistance, which supports more than four million households, and another $16 billion on Project-Based Rental Assistance. The audit found that $1.5 billion in TBRA payments and approximately $4.3 billion of PBRA payments were associated with eligibility issues.

HUD officials said the questionable payments were spread across all 50 states, with particularly high concentrations in New York, California, and Washington, D.C., according to the New York Post. The findings were detailed in a 183-page fiscal year 2025 agency financial report prepared by HUD’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer.

Officials said the report aligns with President Donald Trump’s push for transparency and accountability in federal spending, with a focus on preventing waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer funds, the outlet reported.

HUD now plans to contact housing authorities to determine the extent of the fraud, and will make criminal referrals in cases where wrongdoing is confirmed, according to the outlet.

“30,000 dead people receiving housing isn’t an accident — it was systematic fraud by Biden and the left,” Turner wrote on X Tuesday. “HUD will hold those who defrauded the American taxpayers accountable.”

30,000 dead people receiving housing isn’t an accident — it was systematic fraud by Biden and the left.

HUD will hold those who defrauded the American taxpayers accountable.https://t.co/GJW5IZEXER

— Scott Turner (@SecretaryTurner) December 30, 2025

The findings come amid a broader fraud scandal in Minnesota, where federal prosecutors allege that as much as half of the roughly $18 billion the state has spent since 2018 on Medicaid programs may have been siphoned off by fraudsters, many of Somali descent. Ongoing investigations and prosecutions tied to billions of dollars in stolen federal COVID-era funds have also fueled calls for Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to resign.

The Department of Justice is working with other federal agencies — including the Treasury Department, the Department of Homeland Security, and HUD — to investigate the fraud engulfing the state, Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Monday.

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Photo Credit: (Tom Brenner – The Washington Post / Getty Images)