Housing Agency Misses $750,000 in Payments

The city's housing agency failed to collect more than $750,000 in payments owed by developers, according to an audit by state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

In a program aimed at rehabilitating apartment buildings, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, between 1998 and 2006 collected only about 22% of the fees owed by four developers of "affordable" housing , taking in about $222,000.

The contracts with the developers allowed for the city to collect a quarter of the developers' profits on each project.

The agency had verbal agreements with some of the developers to forgive the payments because of cost overruns on other projects, according to the report. A spokesman for HPD said in a statement that the agency would make the changes recommended in the report, which include documenting any agreements to forgive payments.