Colorado’s homelessness and housing funds recorded $153 million in phantom federal money, audit finds
By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice
Colorado wanted more control over its share of federal pandemic aid before the money hit its federal spending deadlines. So in 2024, the state moved it. It pulled hundreds of millions in American Rescue Plan money back out of four state programs, three of them tied to housing and homelessness, and replaced it with state general funds, so it could spend the federal dollars elsewhere before the deadlines ran out.
Then the Department of Local Affairs set those funds up in the state's accounting system as if they were still federal.
Every time the department spent a state dollar out of the four programs, the system automatically booked a federal reimbursement that was never coming. By the end of the fiscal year the departm...