Rental Housing

This fact sheet reviews how the Our Casas Citywide Resident Council--a nonprofit resident management council in San Antonio, Texas--used technical assistance grant funds provided by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In May 1990, HUD awarded the Our Casas group an $88,000 grant to help train resident managers in public housing. GAO discusses (1) how the grant funds are being spent by the Our Casas group and whether the expenditures are in keeping with the purposes of the grant and (2) whether Our Casas received other federal funding.

GAO found that: (1) on July 18, 1989, the council applied to HUD for a $100,000 grant and on May 17, 1990, it received a grant for $88,000; (2) the council did not receive the $100,000 grant maximum due to funding limitations; (3) as of September 30, 1991, the council had spent $60,695 of its $88,000 grant award, in accordance with the grant's purposes, to support its development of public housing management capabilities; (4) the council has spent almost 14 percent of its grant funds to rent privately owned office space, since it has not been successful in acquiring office space in public housing developments, as encouraged by the HUD policies governing resident management; and (5) as of September 1991, the council had not received any federal funding in addition to the TAG grant, but it had received nonmonetary assistance from ACTION, a federally funded agency that administers and coordinates domestic volunteer programs sponsored by the federal government, and $5,000 from a private nonprofit organization that helps community groups deal with various local neighborhood issues.