City of Los Angeles and CRA/LA: The Accessibility Promise Behind the HUD Money

The City of Los Angeles agreed to pay $38.2 million to resolve allegations of false HUD accessibility certifications for funded housing. The government alleged that the City promised the Department of Housing and Urban Development accessible housing year after year while funding properties that wheelchair users could not use.

The Justice Department announced the City settlement on August 26, 2024. CRA/LA, the successor to the Community Redevelopment Agency of the City of Los Angeles, had settled separately.

For someone who works with affordable housing, the City of Los Angeles and CRA/LA case connects the funding assurances to the buildings and the program residents actually encountered. We see a basic wrong in the alleged conduct: money intended to provide accessible homes supported housing that shut people out.

What the City Certified to HUD

HUD accessibility certifications for funded housing covered both the physical housing and the way people with disabilities could use the housing program. The government alleged that Los Angeles knowingly certified compliance every year despite failures in both.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development provides grants to cities for housing and community development, including construction and rehabilitation of affordable multifamily housing. This grant fraud case concerns the promises attached to that funding.

The redevelopment agency financed and assisted multifamily affordable housing using local tax money and federal grants. The federal money supported a local housing operation, and the accessibility promises reached both the property and the way that operation served residents.

The Justice Department described requirements under the Rehabilitation Act, Americans with Disabilities Act and Fair Housing Act: certain federally assisted multifamily housing must make 5% of all units accessible to people with mobility impairments and an additional 2% accessible to people with visual and auditory impairments.

The administrative requirements carried those features beyond the construction plans. Recipients had to maintain a public list of accessible units describing their features, adopt policies and procedures to place people who needed those features in the units, and designate a city employee to coordinate accessibility efforts.

Each obligation answers a different question. Can a person use the apartment? Can they find it? Does the placement process connect the apartment to someone who needs its features? The annual assurance covered a housing program, with responsibilities reaching from construction into occupancy.

Steep Slopes, High Counters and a Missing List

The government alleged that Los Angeles failed to follow accessibility requirements when building and rehabilitating affordable multifamily properties and failed to make the housing program accessible to people with disabilities. Its account put physical obstacles alongside a failure to provide basic housing information.

The government’s structural allegations are concrete: slopes too steep, counters too high and thresholds that blocked wheelchair access. Those are conditions a resident encounters and a person working on the property can recognize. They give the alleged false grant performance certifications something tangible to be tested against.

The missing public list mattered differently. The government alleged that the City failed to maintain a publicly available inventory of accessible units and their features. Someone looking for housing needed to know which units offered the access they required.

That is why we look at the physical and administrative records together. A housing program can describe a unit’s features in its internal paperwork, but the resident needs that information where they can use it. Conversely, a list describing an accessible unit needs to match the conditions at the property. These are the comparisons the allegations invite, and they reach people working in property management and program administration as well as construction.

The government alleged that the failures continued for more than a decade while the City knowingly and falsely certified compliance annually. We see the absurdity in that alleged contrast: the City assured HUD that it met the accessibility requirements while failing even to tell residents where the accessible apartments were. Year after year.

The City and CRA/LA Settled Separately

CRA/LA’s smaller settlement came first: the United States settled allegations against it for $3.1 million in 2020. It was another defendant in the same lawsuit. The later City settlement addressed the City’s own alleged failures to meet the conditions attached to its housing grants.

What a Housing Insider Can See Behind the Assurance

The useful connection is between the HUD-funded property, the accessibility requirement and what the City represented about compliance. Someone who knows the building may understand the barrier. Someone administering the housing program may understand the unit information or placement policies. Someone handling the grant may know what supported the annual assurance. We work with the person who can explain how those accounts diverged.

Transparency International’s 2024 paper Transparency, Accountability, and Integrity of Public Procurement Systems explains that access to information depends on the quality and availability of the data and on people being able to use it. We see that information problem in the Los Angeles allegations: residents needed a public list that identified accessible units and described their features. The information had to serve the person seeking a home.

A separate HUD matter shows how a different housing operation can contradict its funding account. In the Santa Fe grant case involving The Life Link, the government alleged that grant applications concealed common control of the administrator and landlord and sought reimbursement for vacancies or excess rental assistance. The settling former nonprofit executive admitted that the conduct underlying the allegations involved misrepresentations, fraudulent omissions and deceptive conduct that harmed the United States.

The administrator’s relationship to the landlord and the rental claims mattered there. In Los Angeles, the allegations concerned accessibility and the annual compliance assurances. Both cases connect an alleged false account to HUD with the housing operation behind it: who controlled the rental payments in one, and whether residents could find and use accessible housing in the other.

The Whistleblower Case Behind the Housing Allegations

The False Claims Act allows whistleblowers to bring a qui tam case on the government’s behalf and share in its recovery. This case began with a Los Angeles resident who uses a wheelchair and the Fair Housing Council of San Fernando Valley, a nonprofit disability rights advocacy group. The United States joined in 2017 and took responsibility for pursuing it.

A whistleblower case under the False Claims Act can pay 15% to 30% of what the government recovers.

You Know the Housing Behind the Certification

If you know a housing program promised HUD access that residents did not get, speak with our whistleblower experts about the certification and what you saw. We work beside you to build your strongest housing grant whistleblower case, bringing in grant fraud whistleblower lawyers who understand accessibility certifications and the funding behind them. Your knowledge of the buildings and the program belongs at the center of that work, and we stay your partners throughout.