Management and Evaluation of the Community Development Block Grant Program Need To Be Strengthened

The Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 requires communities to certify in their applications for grants that their community development programs are developed in accordance with the Act's statutory objectives and requires grantees to provide HUD with an annual performance report concerning activities under the programs and their assessment of how the activities relate to objectives.

HUD is not obtaining the information it needs to evaluate community performance under the Community Development Block Grant program. Neither grant application forms nor grantee performance reports are providing information needed to determine whether programs have been developed in accordance with legislative objectives or to assess the progress of the programs. HUD has not satisfactorily performed postaudits and reviews of the use of block grant funds. It has not emphasized monitoring, and its monitoring efforts have not addressed substantive issues. Also, HUD annual reports to the Congress on the block grant program provide very little information on the actual use of block grant funds and the progress of the program. New program regulations require communities to provide more detailed information in their applications, but further changes are necessary.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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