Coast Guard

Housing Acquisition Needs Have Not Been Adequately Justified Gao ID: RCED-92-159 May 19, 1992

During the next five years, the Coast Guard plans to spend more than $200 million to purchase or build 1,200 houses for its members and their families. GAO found that the Coast Guard has not fully complied with requirements to justify the purchase or construction of nine housing projects for fiscal years 1990 through 1992. Although the Coast Guard documented its need for housing with general statements on local housing conditions, such as high rental costs or too little available housing, GAO found little or no support for these assertions. In addition, the Coast Guard did not adequately analyze alternatives such as leasing for meeting its housing needs. Finally, contrary to requirements in its own housing manual, the Coast Guard did not periodically assess housing market conditions following project approval, which occurs about three years before funding becomes available. Thus, the Coast Guard did not adjust for any changes in housing availability that could have made building or purchasing housing unnecessary.

GAO found that the Coast Guard: (1) did not adequately analyze the local housing markets to demonstrate that housing shortages existed and did not support statements about high rental costs or insufficient housing availability with cost or commuting data; (2) did not demonstrate how some of the data it included in project files supported its conclusions for approving housing acquisition projects; (3) failed to develop cost data to compare leasing, purchasing, and construction alternatives; (4) excluded some costs or used different costs and discount rates in its estimates for constructing or purchasing housing; (5) attributed such errors to the lack of detailed housing guidelines, inexperienced housing officials, and a shortage of planning personnel; and (6) typically approved housing acquisition projects 3 years before receiving funding, but did not follow requirements to periodically reassess local conditions to ensure that the housing need still existed.

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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