The Department of Housing and Urban Development funds five key grant programs that encourage resident self-sufficiency but needs to develop better data on expenditures and results, GAO has said.
For example, it said data on resident participation in the five programs were limited, and that the number of families that participated in twoFamily Self-Sufficiency(FSS) programs and Resident Opportunity and Self-Sufficiency Service Coordinators (ROSS SC)program, cannot be reliably assessed due to missing start dates, end dates, and annual updates, and a lack of reporting guidance.
Available data on residents who participated in the FSS programs suggests positive changes for those who completed the programs, but the results are not conclusive because data indicating whether a family exited FSS or subsidized housing were missing for 35 percent of families that started an FSS program in 2006, according to GAO-13-581.
HUD agreed to develop processes and program-specific reporting guidance for three of the programs to better ensure required data on participation and outcomes are complete, however it dismissed a recommendation to better analyze data for the ROSS SC program.
