During the COVID pandemic, Baton Rouge got hundreds of millions of dollars in federal money for housing projects. But an audit found the Office of Community Development sometimes mismanaged that money , and sources say a federal investigation is underway.

The audit looked at seven projects out of hundreds the office handled, though it did not specifically identify them. Here are some of the red flags it found:

High developer fees

City-parish rules say that between 10% to 17% of the total cost of a housing project should go directly to the developer as fees. But in one project, 28% of the cost went to developer fees as the cost of the project ballooned.

The original budget for the project was $220,000, with a developer fee of $33,000. Months later, it more than doubled to $450,000, bu

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