Public Housing

Management Issues Pertaining to the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority Gao ID: RCED-91-70 March 1, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority's (BMHA): (1) voluntary 3-year compliance agreement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and whether it could correct leasing practices that violated title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; (2) reasons for its high vacancy rate; and (3) justification for its high number of employees.

GAO found that: (1) the agreement attempted to remedy BMHA title VI violations while taking into consideration the BMHA financial position and its high vacancy rate, but BMHA had not yet completely implemented the agreement; (2) the agreement's effectiveness will depend on the value of individual incentives provided to tenants and housing developments, and whether BMHA will be able to attract more families to desegregated housing; (3) BMHA should not use its operating funds to pay for individual incentives; (4) implementing the agreement could adversely affect the BMHA financial condition and its ability to reduce its high vacancy rate, but HUD believed that the agreement balanced civil rights requirements with the financial requirements and the vacancy situation; (5) as of June 1990, about 1,300 of approximately 5,000 BMHA federally financed units were vacant; (6) many factors contributed to the high vacancy rate, primarily health hazards, undesirable conditions and locations, restrictive leasing policies, extensive modernization activities, and BMHA inability to promptly prepare vacant apartments for reoccupancy; (7) HUD paid BMHA $240,000 per month to subsidize the vacant units; and (8) although the BMHA staffing level was about 1.5 times higher than the average level for 10 similar housing authorities, HUD approved the BMHA staffing level as necessary to improve the management of its modernization program, address the vacancy problem, and provide increased security coverage.

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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