Homelessness

Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the status of legislatively authorized, federal- and state-administered homeless assistance programs for fiscal year (FY) 1990.

GAO found that the homeless assistance legislation: (1) appropriated about $600 million for funding 18 programs providing direct services involving emergency food and shelter, transitional and permanent housing, primary health care services, mental health care, alcohol and drug abuse treatment, education and job training; (2) required jurisdictions to develop and submit a comprehensive homeless assistance plan when applying for homeless assistance programs; (3) authorized property disposition programs through which agencies turn over unneeded real and personal property to assist the homeless; and (4) created the Interagency Council on the Homeless to coordinate federal programs. GAO also found that: (1) Congress authorized about $2.3 billion and appropriated about $1.8 billion for the homeless assistance programs for FY 1987 through FY 1990; (2) the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Emergency Food and Shelter Program was the single largest funded homeless program, receiving $496 million in funding for FY 1987 through FY 1990; (3) 6 of the 18 assistance programs provided funds through a formulator block-grant process, while the remaining 12 used a competitive process; and (4) for FY 1991, Congress appropriated about $655 million for 15 existing and 5 new programs, and did not reauthorize three programs, which were replaced by newly authorized programs.