but a recent Department of Homeland Security investigation has found that FEMA improperly awarded a $450,000 grant for fire safety and prevention to an ACORN affiliate in New Orleans in 2007. Presumptive House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R., Calif.) requested the review.

“We concluded that the ACORN Institute should not have received these funds, did not fully implement and evaluate the program as approved, and could not substantiate all its grant expenditures,” the investigators write.

To qualify for the fire safety grant, the Acorn Institute claimed to have experience through a program called the Urban Fire Initiative, in which it said it helped remove hazardous debris from more than 3,000 homes damaged in Hurricane Katrina, and also worked with local fire officials in North Carolina and California.
The investigators found that the Urban Fire Initiative did not exist until Acorn officials created it to apply for the grant.

Issa released the following statement in response:

“It is really unthinkable that anyone would use the guise of public safety and helping victims of a tragedy like Hurricane Katrina as a calculating way to inappropriately obtain taxpayer dollars. As the discussion over how to reign in government’s growth and spending moves forward, there couldn’t be a more important time to ensure that the grants awarded with taxpayer dollars meet rigorous criteria and are subject to vigilant oversight to ensure that grant recipients are not given access to taxpayer dollars under false pretenses.”