Assisted Housing

Utility Allowances Often Fall Short of Actual Utility Expenses (Vol. I) Gao ID: RCED-91-40A March 26, 1991

Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on how utility allowances are provided to assisted households and the extent to which the allowances cover utility costs.

GAO found that: (1) about 61 percent of public housing households and 79 percent of section 8 certificate households receive utility allowances; (2) the majority of the 9,500 households at six public housing agencies (PHA) did not pay 30 percent of adjusted income for rent and utilities; (3) the annual rent burden for an estimated 4,471 public housing households at six agencies averaged 30.5 percent, and averaged 36 percent for an estimated 5,015 section 8 households; (4) about 45 percent of the public housing households and 70 percent of the section 8 households had annual rent burdens exceeding 30 percent; (5) households were likely to find their utility expenses difficult to pay when monthly variations between allowances and expenses were large; (6) Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reviews did not always disclose problems with PHA monitoring of rent burdens; (7) PHA erred in calculating monthly adjusted income, rent, utility allowances, and for check-metered households, excess utility consumption charges; and (8) through greater management attention, HUD and PHA could increase the number of assisted households with rent burdens close or equal to 30 percent.

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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