News / Metro * Comment * Email * Print * Blog This * * Follow Metro Housing audit leaves Jacksonville on the hook for $2.

Jacksonville's Housing and Neighborhoods Department is paying $2.7 million back to the federal government because a housing program was mismanaged, according to documents reviewed by The Times-Union.

A little known 2008 audit said that the Home Investment Partnerships Program, administered by Housing and Neighborhoods, provided money for the purchase and renovation of two affordable housing complexes - Ashley Tower Apartments and Magnolia Point Apartments. Those complexes ended up in foreclosure and did not complete key requirements of the program.

The Home program is funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and provides money to local governments or nonprofits with the aim of buying or rehabilitating affordable housing. The city is repaying HUD by taking lesser annual Home allocations over a three-year period.

The audit found that because the two complexes entered foreclosure, they did not provide affordable housing for the length of time required by the program. As a result, the audit said, the city should have stepped in and purchased the properties to allow them to continue providing affordable housing.

City housing officials disagreed.

Wight Greger, director of the city's Housing and Neighborhoods Department, told HUD that the city was not in a financial position to buy and operate the housing complexes.

She said that HUD's own rules do not require a city to purchase a foreclosed property, which sold at a foreclosure sale for $700,000, but say that it "may use purchase options."