U S Government Accountability Office

Housing assistance U S Government Accountability Office

" The federal government plays a major role in providing housing assistance to homebuyers, renters, and state and local governments. It incurred about $170 billion in obligations for federal assistance and estimated forgone tax revenue in fiscal year 2010. However, fiscal realities raise questions about the efficiency of multiple housing programs and activities across federal agencies with similar goals, products, and sometimes parallel delivery systems. This report assesses the (1) extent to which there is overlap or fragmentation in selected housing programs, (2) federal collaborative efforts, and (3) implications of consolidating selected housing programs. For this report, GAO updated and expanded prior work and collected and analyzed new data, focusing on the largest programs in terms of funding. In addition to addressing these objectives, GAO developed a catalog of federal programs and activities that support rental housing and homeownership and identified what is known about the purpose, cost, eligibility, and populations served. The catalog (GAO-12-555SP) is an electronic supplement to this report. "