GAO report shows waste in homeless programs

Sens. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) called for improvements to federal homeless assistance programs.

“Many taxpayers wonder how so many Americans lack stable housing or are homeless when the federal government spends billions every year on housing assistance,” Coburn said. “This pitiful performance demonstrates a clear lack of urgency about the plight of families in need.”

{mosads}On Tuesday, the senators released a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that showed the government evaluated more than 40,000 federal properties for homeless assistance, but transferred only 122 properties to homeless groups in the past 27 years.

“This report confirms many of the concerns homeless assistance providers have told us for years — that the process to find useful properties is burdensome, costly, and ineffective,” Carper said. “The federal government has to get smarter about the way it manages buildings and land.”

Carper and Coburn lead the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. They have introduced the Federal Real Property Asset Reform Act, which would require federal agencies to inventory their properties and assess whether they could be sold or put to better use.

The GAO report recommended that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) reduce the number of properties screened for homeless assistance to only options that are truly viable.