National Park Service

The Park Service provides housing for its employees when either affordable housing is not generally available or staff must be available to respond to after-hours incidents within a park. The Park Service's housing program entails a significant financial commitment. During the past 10 years, the agency has spent about $175 million on employee housing. In addition, the agency now has almost $20 million in unspent construction funding that it plans to use for current housing needs. The Park Service estimates that it needs about another $300 million to repair and replace some of its existing housing inventory. This testimony discusses (1) what the Park Service did in response to 1996 legislation directing the agency to eliminate unnecessary government housing and rely more on the private sector to supply housing and (2) the likely impact of that action.

GAO noted that: (1) the Park Service carried out both actions that it committed to in October 1997; (2) in November 1997, it issued a revised housing policy; (3) generally, the revised policy permits the agency to provide housing under two situations: (a) to assure timely responses to park emergencies; and (b) where parks are located in remote areas or in areas where affordable housing is not available; (4) this policy was aimed at minimizing the amount of employee housing it provides--which was consistent with the goals of the 1996 law; (5) in 1997, the Park Service also began a park-by-park housing needs assessment to determine the number of housing units needed under the new policy; (6) in order to ensure that this assessment was independent and objective, the agency hired two contractors to perform the assessment; (7) the contractors' park-by-park assessments found that the Park Service had 522 more housing units than it needed; (8) however, in reviewing the contractors' assessments, park managers and regional officials disagreed with the contractors' findings and concluded that 760 more units than they now have were needed--a difference of 1,282 units; (9) this wide divergence of opinion about how much housing the agency should provide reflects many park managers' fundamental disagreement with the revised housing policy; and (10) the disagreement with Park Service policy by park managers raises serious concerns about the credibility of future Park Service housing initiatives and any funding requests that the agency might have for providing employee housing.