The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report on December 15 examining HUD’s Community Development Block Grant-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program. In particular, the report sought to analyze data concerning the progress of programs in states that have received funds under the CDBG-DR program in order to determine program progress with respect to housing activities. The GAO found that data reported by states utilizing CDBG-DR funds – known as grantees – did not include enough information to regularly track progress in program implementation or observe how efficiently programs were operating.
The GAO found that because HUD had not included more stringent requirements for the collection and reporting of program data, many grantees were unable to effectively monitor the pace and timeliness of recovery programs. In the case of Texas’s CDBG-DR program, operated by the state’s General Land Office (GLO), the GAO found that the state’s data system regularly included incorrect dates, dates that had been reset, and missing dates for applications for housing projects, impeding the analysis of program progress.
In addition, the GAO’s report found that reports submitted directly to HUD on a quarterly basis were not clear or presented in a manner useful to policymakers or members of the public. While information on the progress of housing-related activities and expenditures was included in such reports, the information was divided in such a way as to prevent aggregate data from being found. According to the GAO, HUD will require future grantees to include aggregate data for this reason. The report also found that quarterly reports often left out important performance measures, limiting the ability of the public to determine whether progress on certain projects had been made.
The GAO also issued two recommendations for HUD in the report. On the one hand, the GAO stated that “the Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development should revise HUD’s standard Quarterly Performance Report format and related guidance to ensure the reports provide clearer and more transparent information on the status of grantees’ CDBG-DR activities. For example, the revised report format could include a summary of aggregated performance measures at the activity level.” On the other hand, the report suggested that “the Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development should, in the event of future CDBG-DR funding, require recipients to collect and analyze data on critical milestones needed to monitor the timeliness of their housing activities and inform corrective actions, consistent with leading project management practices.”
Read the text of the GAO report at: https://bit.ly/3hy6pV2