The federal government has helped provide affordable housing to low- income households since the 1930s. Since then, a number of federal housing programs have subsidized the construction of housing for the poor, provided rental assistance to tenants in existing privately owned housing, and insured mortgages for both single- and multifamily properties. Today, HUD administers the majority of federal housing assistance programs in urban areas, and USDA’s Rural Housing Service (RHS) implements housing programs in rural areas. In general, both HUD and USDA programs target families at lower income levels. HUD programs target families with incomes that are: extremely low (no more than 30 percent of an area’s median), very low (no more than 50 percent of an area’s median), and low (no more than 80 percent of an area’s median). USDA programs also target families with incomes that are very low and low. In addition, some USDA programs target families with moderate incomes (no more than 115 percent of an area’s median). HUD and USDA provide many types of housing assistance programs, including single-family programs, multifamily programs, rental assistance programs, and public housing. Housing developments can be assisted by multiple programs. For example, a loan or mortgage on a multifamily property may be insured through a HUD or USDA program, and the property may have tenants that receive rental assistance from these agencies. Federal housing assistance can generally be categorized as follows: Single-family programs that provide mortgage insurance, loan guarantees, or direct loans for homeowners and grants or loans for home repairs or modifications; Multifamily programs that provide loans, subsidies, mortgage insurance or loan guarantees, or a combination of these to support the development and rehabilitation of rental properties, including: Production programs that provide federal funds to construct or substantially rehabilitate units for households with extremely low to moderate incomes; and Mortgage insurance/loan guarantee programs that provide incentives for lenders to finance rental housing by reducing risk; Rental assistance programs, which can be used for multifamily and some single-family housing and generally pay property owners the difference between 30 percent of a household’s adjusted income and its rent, including: Tenant-based rental assistance that provides vouchers for eligible tenants to rent privately owned apartments or single-family homes and that tenants can use in new residences if they move; and Project-based rental assistance that is attached to specific properties and is available to tenants only when they are living in units at these properties; and Public housing, which is provided through HUD and offers units for eligible tenants in properties administered by public housing authorities. The RHS implements all of the USDA programs we reviewed. Two offices administer the HUD programs covered in this report: The Office of Housing, which administers multifamily subsidy and mortgage insurance programs, multifamily production programs, and a variety of single-family programs; and The Office of Public and Indian Housing, which administers the Public Housing, Housing Choice Voucher, and Section 8 Moderate Rehabilitation Programs. HUD has specific goals for increasing housing opportunities for the elderly. As outlined in its fiscal year 2004 Annual Performance Plan, these goals include (1) increasing the availability of affordable housing for the elderly, (2) increasing the number of assisted-living units, (3) increasing the number of elderly households living in privately owned, federally assisted multifamily housing served by a service coordinator, and (4) increasing elderly families’ satisfaction with their Section 202 units. USDA does not have specific goals related to the elderly in its fiscal year 2004 Annual Performance Plan. However, USDA does have the broad objective of improving the quality of life of rural families by financing, among other things, quality housing. To reach this objective, USDA has established two housing-related goals: (1) to increase financial assistance to rural households to buy a home, and (2) to increase the number of minority homeowners. We identified a total of 23 federal housing programs that are targeted at or have special features for the elderly: 2 that are intended for the elderly only, 3 that are targeted to the elderly and disabled, and another 18 that have special features, such as properties designated for elderly occupants and income adjustments that lower elderly households’ rental payments. Some or all units in many multifamily and public housing properties are designated for the elderly. Data on the number of elderly served are not available for each program; however, analysis of available data shows that the elderly occupied at least 1.3 million units provided through several of these programs. Limited information is available about the effectiveness of most housing programs in assisting elderly households. HUD and USDA offer 23 housing programs that either target or have special features for the elderly. Two programs—HUD’s multifamily Section 202 program and USDA’s single-family Section 504 Rural Housing Repair and Rehabilitation Grants program—are currently intended for elderly beneficiaries only. Three multifamily programs target the elderly and the disabled: HUD’s ALCP and two mortgage insurance programs (Section 231 and Section 232). Although not targeted to the elderly, another 18 programs have special features for them. For example, public housing and some multifamily programs allow properties to be wholly or partially designated for occupancy by the elderly. Also, rental assistance programs and USDA single-family programs make adjustments to elderly households’ incomes when determining program eligibility or calculating benefits. These programs are briefly described in Figure 1, and in more detail in Appendix III. Although most of the 23 programs are intended for households with low, very low, or extremely low incomes, 7 of the multifamily insurance programs may provide benefits for households of all income levels (that is, there are no income restrictions or limits). Among these 23 programs, 13 have approximately 943,000 units designated for the elderly, based on available data (fig. 2). Some public and multifamily housing programs may designate properties wholly or partially for the elderly, but the number of units set aside varies across programs. As figure 2 shows, the Section 202 and Section 231 programs have designated most of their units for the elderly (84 percent and 90 percent, respectively), consistent with these programs’ targeting of the elderly or the elderly and disabled. The Section 202 program designates the most units for the elderly—about 268,000 units. HUD, USDA, and other agencies also administer other housing programs for which the elderly are eligible, but which do not have special features for the elderly. For example, under the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program, the largest active multifamily housing production program, states receive annual allocations of tax credits and distribute them at their discretion. In their guidelines for the distribution of tax credits, some states have established preferences for properties intended for the elderly, but the federal government does not require such preferences. Similarly, HUD’s single-family mortgage insurance program does not have features that apply only to elderly borrowers. HUD's Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program, which targets only elderly homeowners, did not meet our definition of housing assistance for this review. This program allows elderly homeowners to borrow against the equity in their homes and defer repayment for as long as they occupy their homes, but the money can be used for any purpose, not just housing. Appendix I explains our methodology for determining which programs to include, and Appendix IV provides brief descriptions of some programs that were excluded from this review. Elderly households occupied at least 1.3 million units provided through HUD and USDA rental assistance, public, and multifamily housing programs for which data on occupancy were available between April and June 2004 (fig. 3). The household counts by program do not match the unit counts presented in figure 2 and Appendix III, because some units may have been vacant or current data on tenants may have been incomplete. The data include households in units designated for the elderly as well as other elderly households receiving assistance through the programs. Overall, elderly households comprised approximately 30 percent of the households participating in programs for which data were available. In addition to the elderly households in public and multifamily housing programs, at least 69,650 elderly households received loans or grants through 4 USDA single-family programs from October 1995 through April 2004, the time period for which we were able to obtain data (fig. 4). Specifically, USDA’s Section 504 grants program, which provides home repair grants to elderly homeowners, made at least 40,697 grants to elderly recipients during that period. Also, the Section 502 Rural Housing Loans (Direct), Section 502 Direct Housing Natural Disaster Loans, and Section 504 Rural Housing Repair and Rehabilitation Loans programs, which offer loans for home purchase or repair, had at least 28,953 elderly borrowers. USDA generally did not have data on the age of borrowers in its Section 502 guaranteed loan program, which had more than 167,500 active loans as of April 2004. Program effectiveness can be assessed in a number of ways—for example, by evaluating the extent to which programs reach or serve intended beneficiaries or examining the efficiency with which they serve those that they do reach. In evaluation research, “effectiveness” is often defined in terms of the achievement of program goals or outcomes. While HUD and USDA have not established specific goals for each housing program that offers assistance for the elderly in their annual Performance and Accountability Reports, these reports contain limited information on some programs’ performance—that is, the extent to which a program met specific goals and objectives or contributed to the attainment of larger overarching goals. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has used its standardized Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) to assess five of the programs, finding that three had not demonstrated results, one was ineffective, and one was moderately effective. While we also identified academic studies of some programs we reviewed, they generally did not evaluate the effectiveness of a program in terms of the extent to which it reached its goals. For example, some academic studies analyzed the impact of the public housing and housing choice voucher programs upon property values. However, affecting property values is not a goal of these programs.