The federal government plays a major role in supporting housing. Federal housing assistance includes, but is not limited to, the following categories: Homeownership programs, often called single-family housing programs, provide mortgage insurance, loan guarantees, and direct loans to support the purchase or refinance of a home, as well as grants or loans for home repairs or modifications. Rental housing programs, often called multifamily programs, provide loans, interest rate subsidies, loan guarantees, tax incentives, or a combination of these to promote the development and rehabilitation of privately owned rental properties. Rental assistance programs, which make rents affordable to eligible households by paying the difference between the unit’s rent and 30 percent of a household’s adjusted income. These programs include (1) tenant-based rental assistance that provides vouchers for eligible tenants to rent privately owned apartments or single-family homes and can be applied to different properties if tenants move, and (2) project-based rental assistance that is attached to specific properties and available to tenants only when they are living in units at these properties. In the 1930s, when most rural residents worked on farms and rural areas generally were poorer than urban areas, Congress authorized separate housing assistance for rural areas and made USDA responsible for administering it. Specifically, in 1937 the Bankhead-Jones Farm Tenant Act authorized USDA to provide long-term, low-interest loans to farm tenants and sharecroppers so that they could purchase and repair farms, including homes on farms. The Housing Act of 1949 authorized new rural lending programs through USDA and made farm owners eligible for assistance for dwellings and other farm buildings. Amendments added in 1961 made nonfarm properties eligible for single-family loans and created the farm labor housing program. A 1962 amendment created the rural rental housing program. The housing programs that RHS currently administers include, but are not limited to, the following: The Section 502 Single Family Housing Guaranteed Loan Program (single-family guarantee program) provides guarantees on mortgage loans to households with low and moderate incomes in rural areas. The Section 521 Rental Assistance Program (rental assistance program) provides rental subsidies to help very low- and low-income rural tenants afford decent rental housing. The properties in which the tenants live were created through other RHS programs that provide low-interest loans for the development of multifamily housing. The Section 514 and 516 Farm Labor Housing Loan and Grant Program (farm labor housing program) provides direct loans and grants for the development of on-farm and off-farm housing for farmworker tenants. The farm labor housing program is the only RHS program that does not have to meet rural eligibility criteria—that is, it funds properties in both urban and rural areas. Our prior work assessing fragmentation, overlap, and duplication in selected housing programs concluded that increased collaboration or even consolidation of certain housing programs (including RHS programs) could make the programs and program administration more effective. In an August 2012 report, we found that overlap exists between selected single-family federal housing programs—particularly those of RHS and HUD—in the products offered and populations (income groups) and geographic areas they served. For instance, RHS, HUD, and VA all guarantee single-family mortgage loans for homeowners. According to fiscal year 2009 loan data, 74 percent of HUD borrowers fell into the low- to moderate- income category and therefore met the income eligibility requirement for the RHS single-family guarantee program in fiscal year 2009. Also according to fiscal year 2009 data, HUD served a larger number of low- and moderate-income households in nonmetropolitan counties, including those parts of the county considered by USDA’s Economic Research Service to be rural or completely rural (see fig. 1). HUD and VA single-family programs are not restricted geographically. In contrast, eligible areas for RHS programs are “rural,” as defined by statute. However, in our August 2012 report, we found that RHS can operate in virtually all areas of the United States, and 37 percent of the population as of 2011 was eligible for rural housing programs on the basis of geography alone. Over the years, we have found that the methods for identifying eligible areas results in similar areas being treated differently. For example, in our August 2012 report, we reiterated a finding from a 2004 report that the definition of rural used to determine eligibility for rural housing programs can lead to similar areas receiving different eligibility determinations. Our 2004 report recommended that Congress consider certain changes to the definition to better ensure that RHS made more consistent eligibility determinations for rural housing programs. We maintain that these changes would improve the consistency with which RHS determines eligibility for such programs. In addition, the changes would help target the programs to more rural areas—for instance, by eliminating “grandfathered” eligibility for places that had become part of metropolitan areas. Agencies have started to work on better coordinating their single-family programs. In February 2011, the administration announced a task force to evaluate the potential for coordinating or consolidating homeownership loan programs at HUD, USDA, and VA. But, in our August 2012 report, we found that opportunities existed to increase collaboration among the agencies and potentially realize efficiencies. The single-family task force’s efforts as of 2012 had not yet incorporated key collaborative practices we identified in previous work. We concluded that practices, such as identifying goals and resources and defining strategies and outcomes, would be important as the task force moved forward. We recommended that HUD, USDA, and VA, and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) take steps to establish a more rigorous approach to collaboration. For example, as a first step, agencies could define and articulate goals or common outcomes for their collaborative efforts. HUD, USDA, and VA generally agreed with the recommendation; however, HUD and OMB stated that actions should wait until after the housing markets stabilized. In 2014, representatives from HUD, USDA, VA, and other agencies addressed our recommendation by signing a Joint Federal Housing Agencies Working Group Organization Charter. The charter stated that the purpose of the working group included promoting coordination and consistency in federal housing programs. It also set membership rules, voting procedures, and meeting schedules. Our August 2012 report also found overlapping purposes in selected RHS, HUD, and Treasury multifamily programs, but differing products, areas served, and delivery methods. For example, RHS, HUD, and Treasury provide financing for development and rehabilitation of multifamily housing for low- and moderate-income households, but RHS- financed properties were more concentrated in rural areas, while properties financed through HUD and Treasury programs were more concentrated in urban and suburban areas. But for rental assistance programs, while RHS had a much higher proportion of assisted units in small town rural zip codes and isolated rural zip codes (rural zip codes) than HUD had in those areas, HUD had a greater number of assisted units in rural zip codes than RHS. Specifically, as of 2012, HUD provided assistance to 235,828 units in rural zip codes and RHS to 176,957 (see fig.2). We also found that agencies had been working to coordinate multifamily programs. More specifically, HUD, USDA, and Treasury had been working to consolidate and align requirements in rental housing programs through the Interagency Rental Policy Working Group established by the White House’s Domestic Policy Council in 2010. Although the working group’s efforts were consistent with many key collaborative practices, our August 2012 report found that the group had not taken full advantage of opportunities to reinforce agency accountability for collaborative efforts or expanded the scope of its evaluation to include proposals that would require statutory action. We recommended that the Rental Policy Working Group take steps to document collaborative efforts in strategic and annual plans to help reinforce agency accountability for these efforts. As of May 2015, this recommendation has not been implemented, and RHS indicated that it was seeking ways to formally document the results of interagency collaboration. We also found that consolidation of similar RHS and HUD housing programs may offer an effective means for achieving long-term cost savings. We first suggested in 2000 that Congress consider requiring USDA and HUD to examine the benefits and costs of merging programs serving similar markets and providing similar products. In our August 2012 report, we found that in subsequent years, certain aspects of the RHS and HUD homeownership programs grew more alike (for example, as RHS shifted from single-family direct loans toward loan guarantees). However, we indicated that the current statutory framework imposed additional challenges on the agencies’ ability to consolidate similar programs. For example, HUD has noted that without legislative changes, any efforts to merge the programs likely would result in a more cumbersome delivery system. Thus, any evaluations of which programs, products, systems, and processes to retain, revise, consolidate, or eliminate would involve complex analyses, trade-offs, and difficult policy decisions. We concluded that the single-family task force offered opportunities for these agencies to identify potential areas for consolidation or greater coordination and which actions would require statutory change. We recommended that to build on efforts already under way to coordinate, consolidate, or improve housing programs, and help inform Congress’s decision-making process, HUD, Treasury, USDA, and VA should evaluate and report on the specific opportunities for consolidating similar housing programs, including those that would require statutory changes. HUD, USDA, and VA generally agreed with the recommendation. However, the recommendation has yet to be implemented. In our prior work on RHS’s rental assistance and farm labor housing programs, we concluded that RHS could take additional steps to enhance program oversight and efficiency. Our May 2012 report on improper rental assistance payments made seven recommendations to RHS, three of which are implemented. In a March 2011 report on oversight of the farm labor housing program, we made seven recommendations to RHS, three of which are implemented. Further actions are needed to address the remaining recommendations. The following discussion addresses selected recommendations from these reports. (See app.