The Boston Housing Authority violated federal and local requirements by allowing residents to live in unsafe units, according to a report released Thursday.

The inspector general of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development inspected apartments and the buildings in which they were located, as well as audited several years of BHA records. They found the authority did not consistently perform the required inspections of its properties or correct problems in a timely manner.

Inspectors randomly selected 36 units for their audit, and found 86% of them had deficiencies that needed to be addressed. Some of those problems were considered potentially life-threatening, like non-working fire alarms and blocked exits. Other issues identified included damaged windows and mice infestations.

“HUD relies on public housing agencies to ensure that public housing units funded by HUD are decent, safe, and sanitary,” said HUD acting Inspector General Stephen M. Begg in a statement.

The report said BHA’s problems partly were due to insufficient staffing, and it did not communicate those staffing challenges to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

After inspections had ceased during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as a public health precaution, BHA struggled to catch up on deferred maintenance while operating with a depleted staff.

The authority’s policy is to correct life-threatening problems within 24 hours. But HUD’s review of BHA’s work order system found that it took the authority an average of four days to close work orders for serious deficiencies in 2022, which rose to 14 days in 2024.

The inspector general also said BHA inspectors miscategorized some problems as being less serious than they truly were, adding to the delayed response times.

BHA policies say less serious health and safety deficiencies should be addressed within 20 days, and problems listed as “other” should be fixed within 25 days. For less serious maintenance needs, the authority’s work order system shows the average response was 36 days in 2022, and that increased to 92 days in 2024.

HUD is recommending that the BHA come up with a corrective action plan.

Mayor Michelle Wu’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.