Rental Rehabilitation With Limited Federal Involvement

Who Is Doing It? At What Cost? Who Benefits? Gao ID: RCED-83-148 July 11, 1983

In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed rental housing rehabilitation activities funded by the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Program.

GAO assessed the rental rehabilitation programs in 73 communities across the Nation which managed CDBG programs during the past 3 years. GAO found that: (1) few communities have had recent experience in designing, implementing, or evaluating rental rehabilitation programs; (2) rehabilitation costs averaged about $7,000 per unit and frequently included improvements beyond those needed to eliminate housing deficiencies; (3) subsidies may have been greater than necessary because localities did not tailor finance methods to the projects' situations; and (4) localities often did not know whether lower income households were being assisted or displaced by rehabilitation because data were not kept. GAO concluded that, under the present CDBG Program, the potential for the displacement of lower income households and the targeting of rental rehabilitation programs to benefit the poor is strong.

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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