Housing Rehabilitation as an Urban Policy Alternative

Abstract

Economic and social changes in central cities have made physical decay widespread, and housing rehabilitation has become an increasingly important strategy for reversing this decay. The principal factor which affects the design and impact of housing rehabilitation programs is the income group at which they are targeted. Programs directed at the housing poor face a series of problems related to the lack of resources of these groups, while the principal problem of programs aimed at middle-income groups is reversing the pattern of neighborhood disinvestment. All types of rehabilitation programs share problems of low productivity due to the complexity of the rehabilitation process and to the overall lack of resources committed to them. As a part of a larger community development process, housing rehabilitation programs must embrace and reconcile the sometimes conflicting goals of maximum physical revitalization and the provision of improved housing services for the poor. This does not require radical new programs but rather a sophisticated mix of existing approaches coupled with the funding commitments necessary to execute them. The current trend towards fiscal retrenchment will seriously interfere with further efforts to utilize housing rehabilitation as an effective tool for revitalization.