Two top officials with the Department of Housing and Urban Development admitted at a congressional hearing this week that the agency knowingly missed a legally required deadline that would have made desperately needed hurricane relief funding available to Puerto Rico.

…The housing agency was supposed to issue funding notices to 18 states affected by disasters on Sept. 4. They published all the notices except Puerto Rico’s. The publication of the notice would have allowed Puerto Rico to start drafting a plan that would create the structures needed to manage the much-needed funds.

…Woll admitted that HUD had “no statutory authority” to miss such a deadline.

…“As the HUD Inspector General’s letter clearly states, HUD officials misled congressional staff about the conclusions of the IG’s review of Vivienda’s capacity to administer disaster recovery funds in an attempt to justify their violation of the law,” Rep. Norma Torres, D-Calif., who brought up the letter during the hearing, told NBC News.

…So far, Puerto Rico has received only the first $1.5 billion of a total of $20 billion granted through the agency’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery Program, or CDBG-DR, for infrastructure repairs and rebuilding homes.

Experts have anticipated that the flow of housing funds will be paralyzed until HUD appoints a financial monitor for Puerto Rico.

HUD officials knowingly failed ‘to comply with the law,’ stalled Puerto Rico hurricane relief funds

sigh…