Housing authority gets 100 on federal audit

FORT MADISON – The Fort Madison Housing authority is quietly rebranding itself as a wholesome program aimed at local housing insecurity.
The program was experiencing turmoil and heavy turnover when current Executive Director Mike Dear took over in December of 2022.
“I'm telling you this - my life would make for an amazing, amazing movie, that's a fact. The cocktail that I inherited - you’re talking infestations of roaches, bed bugs, mental health, and there were no pathways of trying to lead people towards getting those things kind of figured out,” he said.
“You’re talking about all the above.”
Now in June of 2026, the authority is celebrating their first, and one of just a few nationwide, scores of 100 on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s National Standards for the Physical Inspection of Real Estate (NSPIRE) audit.
The audit is a random audit with a 30-day notice from the federal audit firm and inspected 36 of 134 units under the Fort Madison authorities control – in one day.
The audit looks for critical health and safety issues that could be present for residents and grades the authority on any incidents observed. Dear said there were some remediation suggestions made during the audit, but no scoring deductions.
Dear said that performance highlights the change in culture and communication that’s taking place at the authority – a change that is being reflected in occupancy and resident satisfaction.
Dear said the authority knew NSPIRE would be auditing operations at some point, but they hadn’t been out in more than two years. He said they didn’t know when the audit would take place until they got a 30-day notice.
“Let me tell you - three years prior - there's no way that they show up at that time and that happens. There's no way. And the biggest thing I can convey to you is the amount of support between our office and the people. There's no way for us to get that score without supporters wanting to be a part of that making that happen,” Dear said.
“This is a true indication of a culture change. We had essentially a month to prepare for this, but we were really preparing for a much longer period of time.”
Dear said he sent staff to a US Inspection Group (USIG) training program in September to help prepare for the inspection he knew was coming at some point in 2026.
“They're not HUD employees, but they work very closely with industry experts to train HA (Housing Authorities) on preparing for inspections. I can't speak for other HAs, but we knew the value in that training. We learned at that time that 65% of agencies failed the initial NSPIRE rollout,” he said.

The training involved housing authority maintenance staff and planning for overall better operations around the NSPIRE model.
When the authority received notification of the pending inspection in January, they enacted a multi-week plan to attack any remaining issues that hadn’t been resolved.
“Basically we had a four-week plan, a three-week plan, a two-week plan, and a one-week plan down to one day. We had a lot of foot traffic in and out of here and we had residents reaching out and pointing things out to us,” Dear said.
“It almost got overzealous because they were highlighting things that just were not points of what they were going to be looking at for sure. But we took them no matter what and, because of that scale of communication, we were able to be successful.”
Dear said he had not been through any audits, even audits prior to NSPIRE, and the new system is brand new, and they didn’t know what to expect, which makes failing them even more likely.
Dear said the inspector was very complimentary throughout the process and the authority was trying to learn as much as they could during the inspection to even include a debrief of the inspection the day after and then again when the score was received.
He said the sustainability of that score by setting the bar that high will be based on understanding the pressure to perform  and how that has made them better.
“When you go through something like that the first time, you’re naturally thinking at the end of that, and we had this pretty well thought out for about four weeks, there was an understanding that when the scoring paperwork came, we were just going to use that to piggy-back on the energy that was already here,” he said.
Dear said the authority is at max capacity and the demand for housing is high.
“A lot of people are desperate for housing. We are maxed. If you could see our waiting list right now. Whatever the negativity was out there, it's working in reverse. It’s unreal. Housing is a critical component and, in meeting with other people around the state, the priorities are mental health, and then housing second,” he said.
“We see both worlds here. Here’s your cocktail.”
He said the work is almost ministry work and faith plays a big role.
“If people knew what it was like to sit in this chair and deal with the waves that hit against this business every day. It takes a certain kind of faith to survive that for sure.”