Homelessness

Federal Personal Property Donations Provide Limited Benefit to the Homeless Gao ID: RCED-91-108 July 15, 1991

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the availability of federal surplus personal property to homeless assistance providers, focusing on: (1) how extensively the donation program has assisted the homeless; (2) whether program features limit its effectiveness; and (3) whether program modifications could improve its effectiveness.

GAO found that: (1) the Federal Surplus Property Donation Program is not a significant source of aid to the homeless; (2) program features discouraging program use by homeless assistance providers include the types of items available for donation, the poor condition of potentially useful items, inconvenient federal and state distribution points, service and handling fees, the low priority assigned to homeless assistance providers in the distribution process, and impractical reporting requirements; (3) 41 of 45 selected homelessness assistance providers relied more heavily on personal property donations from private sources than from the federal donation program; and (4) the current method of valuing donations at their original acquisition cost rather than at current value overstates the worth of many items, but because all items are valued on this basis, this method permits reasonable comparisons of assistance going to different groups.

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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