Pubdate: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 Source: Maui News, The (HI) Contact: 2002 The Maui News Website: http://www.mauinews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2259 HOUSING AGENCY FORFEITS NEARLY $500,000 IN FUNDS HONOLULU (AP) -- The state agency that oversees public housing was forced to forfeit nearly $500,000 that could have been used to hire anti-drug personnel because it did not spend the money in time, according to an agency spokesman. The Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawaii failed to use the funds over the past two years because the agency was in the midst of ''hiring restrictions,'' said Bob Hall, a spokesman for the agency's executive director, Sharyn Miyashiro. Because the agency didn't fill the jobs quickly enough, the money had to be returned. ''I think overall we could have been a little more aggressive in filling the positions,'' said Hall, Miyashiro's executive assistant. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development gave the state housing agency $2.7 million in grants in the 1997 and 1998 fiscal years under the Public Housing Drug Elimination Program. The agency spent $2.24 million on programs meant to ''eliminate drug-related crime and other criminal activities associated with drug-related problems'' through such organizations as the Honolulu Police Department, Honolulu Community Action Program, Boys and Girls Clubs of Honolulu, the YMCA, Hawaii Dance Alliance, Child and Family Services, Coalition for a Drug-Free Hawaii and the Salvation Army, said Darrell Young, the agency's information officer. However, the agency failed to spend $231,000 over those two years, and the federal government ''recaptured'' the unspent money, according to state and federal records. Most of that money was earmarked for hiring staff to deal with drug-related housing problems. The Bush administration this year canceled the Drug Elimination grant program, but the agency still has two years' worth of grant money that must be spent by September of next year, Hall said. The Housing and Community Development Corp. of Hawaii has been under fire from federal officials for failing to spend millions of dollars in housing grant money and for misspending millions more. In a May letter to Miyashiro, HUD Assistant Secretary Michael Liu said the state housing agency has chronically failed to spend housing grant money in a timely manner, and ordered the agency to spend up to $2 million to hire a consultant to straighten out serious management and organizational problems. ''HUD's California State Office reports that HCDCH has consistently required extensions of deadlines going back to its 1995 grant,'' Liu wrote. Gov. Ben Cayetano last week ordered the attorney general to investigate problems at the agency, including why key documents are missing from public files. - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk