Low-Income Weatherization Programs

GAO must report to Congress annually on the activities being carried out under the Department of Energy's (DOE) weatherization program, including energy savings, program effectiveness, financial controls, and compliance monitoring. At one time, both DOE and the Community Services Administration (CSA) were operating parallel weatherization programs. Weaknesses in the administration of the CSA program included difficulties in obtaining workcrews due to weaknesses in Federal planning efforts; exclusion of rental dwellings in favor of single-family homeowners; and weaknesses in CSA guidance, monitoring, and reporting. Despite coordination between CSA and DOE, the programs were developing with dissimilar standards and requirements causing difficulties in implementation at the local level. GAO recommended that Congress place full responsibility for weatherization in DOE. This has been done. The DOE program has been hampered by a number of problems in the areas of energy savings and priorities, progress and effectiveness, and financial controls and monitoring. DOE did not have a system for estimating energy savings actually achieved or for selecting homes to be weatherized which offer the greatest potential for energy savings and for benefiting low-income persons. It plans to estimate energy savings as part of a program evaluation plan which was implemented during 1979. Progress and effectiveness have been hampered by problems in obtaining sufficient labor, lack of emphasis on rental units, and legal limits on the amount States and local administering agencies can spend on administrative expenses. Most local agencies were not maintaining adequate accounting and inventory systems and were not spending grant funds in accordance with the program regulations. DOE needs to implement a monitoring system to identify problems and assist States to improve their financial management and monitoring capabilities. GAO believed that the problems in the weatherization program were correctible and that its direction should remain under DOE.