Homelessness

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the availability of surplus federal property for use by the homeless under Title V of the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act.

GAO found that: (1) between January and June 1990, the Department of Housing and Urban Development found that 52 percent of 7,666 properties reviewed for potential use by the homeless were suitable; (2) although suitable, some listed properties were not available for nonfederal use; (3) the Department of Defense's (DOD) planned military base closures could increase the number of properties available to homeless assistance providers; (4) current procedures allowed homeless assistance providers to apply for suitable surplus property that was not yet available for such use; (5) the General Services Administration's (GSA) temporary regulation concerning excess and surplus property did not state when property would be made available to providers; (6) the lack of adequate program publicity made it difficult for homeless assistance providers to become aware of available federal properties; (7) since there was no comprehensive federal guidance on how to obtain federal properties, assistance providers could not go to one source to learn how the program worked; (8) the surplus property program limits some providers' ability to arrange financing to rehabilitate existing structures or build new structures, since the property must be leased; (9) such leases could expose the government to potential liabilities from litigation by persons harmed by property defects; and (10) local jurisdictions could seek compensation for costs associated with changing the property from federal use to a facility for the homeless.

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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