UC Berkeley: LESSONS FOR THE FUTURE OF PUBLIC HOUSING: ASSESSING THE EARLY IMPLEMENTATION OF RAD

In its 2018 budget, the Trump Administration is proposing to slash public housing funding by $1.8 billion. This cut represents a 29 percent decline from 2017, and will compound a longstanding trend of underinvestment in public housing and worsen an already dire situation. Over time, these shortfalls in federal funding have resulted in a $26 billion backlog in needed repairs, leaving many residents in public housing units across the country with untenable living conditions and a precarious housing future. In addition, every year we lose valuable units of public housing to demolition because of this lack of investment: HUD reports that between eight and fifteen thousand units are demolished due to obsolescence every year. The Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, authorized by Congress in 2012, aims to address the problem of underinvestment in public housing. Under RAD, Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) convert their units to either Project Based Voucher (PBV) or Project Based Rental Assistance (PBRA) contracts, which allows them to leverage new financing sources like debt, tax credits, and state and local housing trust funds to invest in unit rehabilitation and operation.