Subsidized housing in the United States

rdf:langString Subsidized housing in the United States

rdf:langString Subsidized housing in the United States is administered by federal, state and local agencies to provide subsidized rental assistance for low-income households. Public housing is priced much below the market rate, allowing people to live in more convenient locations rather than move away from the city in search of lower rents. In most federally-funded rental assistance programs, the tenants' monthly rent is set at 30% of their household income. Now increasingly provided in a variety of settings and formats, originally public housing in the U.S. consisted primarily of one or more concentrated blocks of low-rise and/or high-rise apartment buildings. These complexes are operated by state and local housing authorities which are authorized and funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 2020, there were 1 million public housing units. Subsidized apartment buildings, often referred to as housing projects (or simply the projects), have a complicated and often notorious history in the United States. While the first decades of projects were built with higher construction standards and a broader range of incomes and same applicants, over time, public housing increasingly became the housing of last resort in many cities. Several reasons have been cited for this negative trend including the failure of Congress to provide sufficient funding, a lowering of standards for occupancy, and mismanagement at the local level. In the United States, the federal government provides funding for public housing from two different sources: the Capital Fund and the Operating Fund. According to the HUD, the Capital Fund subsidizes housing authorities to renovate and refurbish public housing developments; meanwhile, the Operating Fund provides funds to housing authorities in order to assist in maintenance and operating costs of public housing. Furthermore, housing projects have also been seen to greatly increase concentrated poverty in a community, leading to several negative externalities. Crime, drug usage, and educational under-performance are all widely associated with housing projects, particularly in urban areas. As a result of their various problems and diminished political support, many of the traditional low-income public housing properties constructed in the earlier years of the program have been demolished. Beginning primarily in the 1970s the federal government turned to other approaches including the Project-Based Section 8 program, Section 8 certificates, and the Housing Choice Voucher Program. In the 1990s the federal government accelerated the transformation of traditional public housing through HUD's HOPE VI Program. Hope VI funds are used to tear down distressed public housing projects and replace them with mixed communities constructed in cooperation with private partners. In 2012, Congress and HUD initiated a new program called the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. Under the demonstration program, eligible public housing properties are redeveloped in conjunction with private developers and investors. The federal government, through its Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program (which in 2012 paid for construction of 90% of all subsidized rental housing in the US), spends $6 billion per year to finance 50,000 low-income rental units annually, with median costs per unit for new construction (2011-2015) ranging from $126,000 in Texas to $326,000 in California.