A new report from the Government Accountability Office reviews five HUD programs that encourage resident self-sufficiency and finds that data are lacking to assess the success of these programs. Rental Housing Assistance: HUD Data on Self-Sufficiency Programs Should Be Improved, released on July 9, was addressed to House Committee on Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance Chair Randy Neugebauer (R-TX) and Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), who had asked the GAO to review the effectiveness of HUD programs that encourage self-sufficiency.The GAO report looks at the voucher and public housing Family Self-Sufficiency (FSS) programs, the Resident Opportunity and Self-Sufficiency Service (ROSS) Coordinator program, and the use of HOPE VI and Moving to Work (MTW) funds for self-sufficiency purposes. “Without complete participation data, HUD lacks key information to effectively manage and evaluate its programs and Congress lacks data needed to oversee the programs,” the GAO report states.“Residents’ participation in the five self-sufficiency programs was not comprehensively known because the data were not reliable, aggregated program-wide, or collected for all participants,” the GAO noted. The report questions the level of oversight of these programs and the accuracy of HUD’s data. The report expresses a range of concerns including lack of information, or questionable information, about the number of people participating in the FSS program and the number of people who did or did not complete the FSS program. Data on program completion were missing for nearly half of the FSS program records the GAO evaluated. Similar data issues were found by the GAO auditors within the ROSS service coordinator program. GAO auditors did find that HUD had HOPE VI community and supportive services data for participating residents, but data is lacking for MTW. “Program-wide data on residents’ participation in MTW activities related to increasing self-sufficiency from fiscal years 2006 through 2011 generally were unavailable,” according to the report. “In addition, HUD does not analyze the data on residents’ participation in activities related to self-sufficiency, because reporting requirements do not call for the reporting of standardized data, such as the number of residents who found employment.”Criticisms of HUD’s use of data, and lack of data from HUD programs, continue in the report. “HUD has not assessed the effectiveness of the MTW program using the information that it requires MTW agencies to submit in their annual performance reports on the impact of their MTW activities, including activities related to increasing resident self-sufficiency. MTW agencies generally have devised their own metrics for activities and reporting performance information, so the usefulness of this information for assessing program-wide results is limited. That is, because the data are not consistent across agencies, they cannot be used to assess the performance of similar activities across MTW agencies. Additionally, in some cases the information is not outcome-oriented and thus cannot be effectively used to assess performance.”Read the report at: http://1.usa.gov/15XT1gg