Public Housing Authorities Research Articles

Social housing after neo-liberalism: new forms of state-driven welfare intervention toward social renters

Allocation policies to provide social housing to people with the highest needs means that a significant portion of tenants have complex, and often unmet, physical and mental healthcare requirements. Consequently, some tenants require health and psychosocial services integrated with housing. Drawing on a mixed-method design including administrative data from an Australian public health and social housing authority, and tenant qualitative interviews, this article demonstrates how integration assists tenants to improve their psychological health, reduce their use of emergency health services, and receive fewer tenancy problems. In addition to the health and psychosocial resources provided, tenants with high needs benefited from integration through housing providers having greater knowledge of the problems and solutions salient to their tenancies. The article’s theoretical contribution is to demonstrate how neoliberalism drives residualization, which in turn creates the need for a well-resourced integrated model. The integrated model constitutes a form of social housing provision after neoliberalism with a discernible but incomplete rupture with neoliberal logics.

Mitigating the Legal Risks for Landlords Under the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program

Public housing units are deteriorating while there are insufficient allocations for their renovation or maintenance. In 2012, Congress initiated the Rental Assistance Demonstration (“RAD”) in an attempt to save public housing without the need to apportion additional funds to housing assistance pro- grams. The RAD program converts public housing to mixed-income housing and transfers majority ownership to private developers. Current tenants of these public housing complexes are transferred to mixed-income apartment complexes owned by private landlords and developers who receive a portion of the rent from the tenant and additional rent from the local Public Housing Authority. The success of the RAD program is dependent on landlords and developers voluntarily participating and electing to dedicate units to affordable housing. This Comment discusses the legal exposures these landlords face when participating in RAD, methods of mitigating these risks, and policies to incentivize participation.

Promoting Work and Self-Sufficiency for Housing Voucher Recipients: Early Findings From the Family Self-Sufficiency Program Evaluation

In 2012, HUD commissioned a national random assignment evaluation of the Family-Self Sufficiency (FSS) program’s impacts on labor market and other quality of life outcomes for households receiving Housing Choice Vouchers (HCVs). The FSS program has two key components: i) funding for Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) to support case managers who work with participant households to develop individualized self-sufficiency plans and access other community services, and ii) funding to support savings and asset development via interest-bearing escrow accounts redeemable upon graduation from the program, generally after 5 years of FSS program participation. This report examines FSS program implementation, participants’ engagement in the program, and program impacts on labor force participation and government benefits receipt in the first 24 months after program enrollment. The evaluation finds that while FSS increased participation in a range of employment-related services and support services by a statistically significant 13 percentage points, participants in the FSS program did not increase employment rates or average earnings in the first 2 years, but did experience small shifts from part-time to full-time employment.

Dynamics of bed bug infestations and control under disclosure policies

Bed bugs have reemerged in the United States and worldwide over recent decades, presenting a major challenge to both public health practitioners and housing authorities. A number of municipalities have proposed or initiated policies to stem the bed bug epidemic, but little guidance is available to evaluate them. One contentious policy is disclosure, whereby landlords are obligated to notify potential tenants of current or prior bed bug infestations. Aimed to protect tenants from leasing an infested rental unit, disclosure also creates a kind of quarantine, partially and temporarily removing infested units from the market. Here, we develop a mathematical model for the spread of bed bugs in a generalized rental market, calibrate it to parameters of bed bug dispersion and housing turnover, and use it to evaluate the costs and benefits of disclosure policies to landlords. We find disclosure to be an effective control policy to curb infestation prevalence. Over the short term (within 5 years), disclosure policies result in modest increases in cost to landlords, while over the long term, reductions of infestation prevalence lead, on average, to savings. These results are insensitive to different assumptions regarding the prevalence of infestation, rate of introduction of bed bugs from other municipalities, and the strength of the quarantine effect created by disclosure. Beyond its application to bed bugs, our model offers a framework to evaluate policies to curtail the spread of household pests and is appropriate for systems in which spillover effects result in highly nonlinear cost-benefit relationships.

Implementation and enforcement of smoke-free policies in public housing.

Smoke-free policies such as those required by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development have the potential to reduce persistent income-related disparities in secondhand smoke exposure. To understand the implementation and enforcement process, as well as barriers and facilitators to compliance and enforcement, we conducted semi-structured interviews (n=37) with representatives from 23 Public Housing Authorities (PHAs) with some level of smoking restriction in place, along with residents from 14 of these PHAs, from January to August 2016. Residents were typically notified of the new policy through group meetings, new resident orientations and/or one-on-one discussions during lease renewal or annual recertification. Timing of implementation varied, with advanced notice of 6 months or a year most common. Enforcement typically involved a series of verbal and/or written warnings, followed by written notice of lease violation, and eventual notice of lease termination and/or eviction. Challenges in enforcement were generally classified as monitoring difficulties or legal concerns. Characterizing current practices (e.g. advance notice, clear communication of escalating consequences, cessation support and concrete evidence of violation) from early adopters sets the stage for identifying best practices and helps to ensure successful and fair implementation of smoke-free policies in subsidized housing.

Landlord Participation Study

The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program is the largest rental housing subsidy program in the United States and has the potential to increase housing options for low-income families. In order to realize this potential, however, the program must attract landlords who accept housing choice vouchers. The primary objectives of this study are: 1) to provide insights from Public Housing Authority (PHA) staff on the factors associated with landlord decisions about whether to participate in the program; and 2) to identify a collection of promising and innovative practices that PHAs have used to increase landlord participation. The study provides key insights into landlord participation in the HCV program and the perspectives of PHA staff on factors influencing landlord decisions on whether to participate. The study also identifies a diverse collection of innovative activities adopted by PHAs to mitigate financial concerns among landlords, make the HCV program simpler, and alleviate landlord concerns about HCV tenants. The study finds that a majority of PHA staff interviewed identified financial reasons as the most important factor affecting landlord participation - with payment standards and fair market rents, damage costs and security deposits, and profit motivations cited as key determining factors.

Perceptions about the Federally Mandated Smoke-Free Housing Policy among Residents Living in Public Housing in New York City

Background: To assess residents’ attitudes towards the United States (U.S.) Department of Housing and Urban Development’s new smoke-free public housing policy, perceptions about barriers to policy implementation, and suggestions for optimizing implementation. Methods: In 2017, we conducted 10 focus groups among 91 residents (smokers and nonsmokers) living in New York City public housing. Results: Smokers and nonsmokers expressed skepticism about the public housing authority’s capacity to enforce the policy due to widespread violations of the current smoke-free policy in common areas and pervasive use of marijuana in buildings. Most believed that resident engagement in the roll-out and providing smoking cessation services was important for compliance. Resident expressed concerns about evictions and worried that other building priorities (i.e., repairs, drug use) would be ignored with the focus now on smoke-free housing. Conclusions: Resident-endorsed strategies to optimize implementation effectiveness include improving the access to cessation services, ongoing resident engagement, education and communication to address misconceptions and concerns about enforcement, and placing smoke-free homes in a larger public housing authority healthy housing agenda.

Exhibiting Reform: MoMA and the Display of Public Housing (1932–1939)

While the explicit aestheticization of modern architecture during MoMA’s first decade of exhibitions is well known, it is too often forgotten that this interpretation was countered from the beginning by exhibitions advancing an understanding of architecture that emphasized its social effects. Coinciding with America’s first large-scale public housing projects, part of the New Deal’s attempt to end the Great Depression through relief, recovery, and reform, MoMA installed several shows advocating for public housing during the 1930s — an overlooked facet of the museum’s well-documented history. This article explores how MoMA was instrumental in introducing and promoting the concept of public housing to the American public by cooperating on several exhibitions with local and federal public housing authorities, such as Housing Exhibition of the City of New York (1934), Architecture and Government Housing (1936) and Houses and Housing (1939). Figures involved in several of these exhibitions such as self-acclaimed ‘housing expert’ Catherine Bauer were also active as part of governmental and non-governmental housing organizations, creating the laws that radically reformed housing in the United States. And yet, these exhibitions simultaneously presented housing as a distinct subcategory of architecture — a category in which quantity and affordability were valued over excellent design. The housing exhibitions made the living environments of the poor visible but perpetuated the divide between a prized elitist modernized aesthetics and built environments for the working-class masses.

Post-occupancy evaluation of urban public housing in Korea: Focus on experience of elderly females in the ageing society

Female elderly individuals make up the majority of public housing residents. Inappropriate guidelines have been neglecting their differentiated needs and this has been negatively affecting their quality of life in public housing. Recognizing the specific needs of female seniors is a key to successful provision of public housing by the government because the proportion of female seniors in public housing has been increasing. This research aims to assess urban public rental housing through post-occupancy evaluation of six housing projects that were developed by public housing authorities in Korea. Focusing on flexibility, safety, accessibility and support for care, questionnaires and interviews were conducted to provide gender-sensitive directions for public housing designs in an ageing society. There are four main findings: (i) The nuclear family-oriented floor plan needs to be changed to provide flexibility reflecting the diverse lifestyles of one or two member residents. (ii) The life safety guideline that assumed housing is mainly catered for healthy young residents would need major revision. (iii) Accessibility issues would need to consider the presence of a caregiver and flexible application, depending on the lifecycle of elderly individuals. (iv) The support for care with a complicated smart home system would need improvement.

Developing Smoke-Free Policies in Public Housing: Perspectives From Early Adopters in 2 Southern States.

Purpose and ObjectivesIn 2016, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) issued a new rule requiring smoke-free policies in conventional public housing by July 2018 (HUD, 2016). This process evaluation describes the policy development experiences of conventional and nonconventional public housing authorities (PHAs) in North Carolina and Georgia that had established smoke-free policies before the HUD rule.Intervention ApproachHUD began to issue guidance that encouraged smoke-free policies in public housing in 2009, and most early adopters were outside of the Southeast. Documenting the process early adopters in the Southeast used to develop their policies provides useful lessons for conventional PHAs and those with properties not covered by the rule.Evaluation MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with PHA representatives from 23 PHAs with some level of smoking restriction, along with residents from 14 of these PHAs, from January to August 2016.ResultsOrganizational leaders and board members were usually the primary players in making the decision to adopt a policy, with approval processes consistent with any type of policy adoption. Common reasons for establishing the policy included costs of turning a unit; health of children, nonsmokers, and staff; HUD guidance; and concerns or experience with fire caused by cigarettes. Levels of restriction were influenced by layout of the property, perceptions of compliance and enforcement challenges, concerns about smokers congregating, resident mobility, weather concerns, consistency with HUD guidance, and availability of funds for designated smoking areas. Resident input was obtained through general meetings, resident advisory boards or councils, surveys, and formal comment periods.Implications for Public HealthUnderstanding the process of policy development and adoption enables public health practitioners to be more effective partners in advising on the flexible components of the HUD smoke-free rule and accelerating the adoption of comprehensive policies within nonconventional PHAs.

The Impact of Housing Instability on Child Maltreatment: A Causal Investigation

ABSTRACTMore than a half million children are confirmed as victims of maltreatment by the child welfare system each year. Children from unstably housed families are over-represented in child maltreatment reports, and a growing body of evidence links housing problems to maltreatment and Child Protective Services (CPS) investigation. The present study applies two propensity score analysis approaches—greedy matching and propensity score weighting—to data from the Fragile Families and Child Well-being Study to move toward a causal explanation of child maltreatment behaviors among mothers in low-income households. Utilizing two separate methods to correct for overt selection bias, the present study finds that housing instability leads to a small increase in maltreatment behaviors, yet this small positive net impact on child maltreatment does not fully explain the over-representation of unstably housed families in the child welfare system. Families experiencing housing problems likely have a range of needs that require earlier, targeted intervention to mitigate consequences of poverty, domestic violence, and maternal depression. Child welfare services should invest resources in housing assistance programs in-house as well as through partnerships with local public housing authorities to stabilize families, reduce housing-related strain on caregivers, and promote family preservation.

Energy Performance Contracting by Public Housing Authorities

This article provides an overview of the legal and contractual considerations for certain performance contracts for energy conservation and on-site energy generation projects for public housing authority (PHA) facilities. It focuses on the importance of achieving an effective and comprehensive energy audit agreement as an initial step in the process. It considers U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requirements together with construction, financing and guarantee considerations.

The Bustle of Horses on a Ship: Drug Control in New York City Public Housing

For decades, violence, drugs and public housing have been closely linked in political culture and popular imagination. In 1990, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) made funds available to public housing authorities to combat drug and crime problems. This program, the Drug Elimination Program (DEP) combined several strategies under one administrative umbrella: police enforcement, drug treatment, drug prevention, youth and gang outreach, community organizing, integrated health and social service agencies, and tenant mobilization projects. In New York, the Housing Authority spent $165 million on DEP in its 330 public housing sites between 1990 and 1996. Yet there has been little research on this large investment, either in New York City or nationwide. In this study, we examined the effects of the DEP intervention at three levels of complementary theoretical relevance: the public housing development itself, the neighborhood in which public housing is situated, and the police precinct that surrounds each public housing project. We used spatial analyses and hierarchical regressions to estimate DEP effects on drug and crime in public housing sites and their surrounding neighborhoods. We show that crime and drug problems were reduced significantly in the immediate neighborhoods and police precincts surrounding the public housing sites, but crime and drug problems in public housing sites were unaffected by DEP interventions. The absence of effects within public housing reflects the details of the DEP strategies, with its disproportionate allocation of funds to policing strategies compared to demand reduction and informal social control programs. DEP police efforts were nominally focused on public housing sites, but in reality were diffused in the NYPD's broader administrative units to provide resources that benefited law enforcement generally. Seen this way, DEP was an important and strategically valuable supplement to the NYPD's strategic response to a particularly acute violence and crime epidemic, but did little to alter the basic social organization of crime and drugs within public housing sites. We argue for an intervention model that promotes collective action between residents and legal actors, interactions that promote citizen compliance and cooperation with police. The police depend heavily on the voluntary cooperation of citizens to fight crime, and DEP created disincentives for cooperation. This social norms approach would invite policing of drug problems in the context of a legitimacy-focused approach that promotes citizen-based regulation of crime and disorder.

Fall-Behind Parents? The Influential Factors on Digital Parenting Self-Efficacy in Disadvantaged Communities

As the Internet penetration in the United States increases, many digital divide researchers have delved into the parent–child dynamics regarding family digital access and use. However, little attention has been paid to digital parenting in terms of monitoring, guiding, and regulating children’s digital lives, especially in the context of disadvantaged communities. As an initial step to fill the critical gaps in related literature, this study casts light on factors that affect the self-efficacy of digital parenting in disadvantaged urban communities. Using a census survey of public housing households in one of the largest public housing authorities in the United States, we found that single motherhood and home Internet access significantly accounted for low–socioeconomic status parents’ digital parenting self-efficacy. We also found that parental engagement in children’s school activities strongly affected their digital parenting self-efficacy. By contrast, we found that other sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors (i.e., gender, education, race/ethnicity), mobile Internet access, parents’ homework help, and educational expectation fail to be contributing factors.

Barriers and facilitators to housing access and maintenance in HUD-VASH: Participant and staff perspectives

ABSTRACTThough the U.S. Departments of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Veterans Affairs (VA) supportive housing (HUD-VASH) program endeavors to address barriers to Veterans accessing and maintaining housing, participants report challenges that lead to program exits. This study aims to understand participants’ views on the factors contributing to their exits from HUD-VASH, as well as how program staff may respond to challenges. This mixed methods study includes four sources of data: (1) surveys with Veterans, (2) semi-structured interviews with a subsample of surveyed Veterans, (3) Veterans’ administrative data from VA electronic data systems, and (4) focus groups with staff from local public housing authorities and VA case management teams. Veterans reported barriers to housing access (e.g., difficult procedures, lack of communication, lack of affordable and adequate housing stock) and housing maintenance (e.g., program rules, mental health and substance use, access to resources), and staff described strategies devised, at the local level, in response to these issues (e.g., better engagement with property owners, funds for deposits and household goods, increased interagency collaboration through HUD-VASH Boot Camps). Findings can inform communities seeking to eliminate Veteran homelessness through HUD-VASH and other supported housing programs.

One Strike to Second Chances: Using Criminal Backgrounds in Admission Decisions for Assisted Housing

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has changed its position toward housing individuals with criminal records from strict one-strike policies in the 1980s to providing second chances to returning citizens. Many public housing authorities have not updated their admission policies for using criminal backgrounds and still adhere to the one-strike philosophy. In response to new guidance from HUD, housing agencies are trying to find a balance between screening practices to identify demonstrable risk but avoid discrimination and violation of the Fair Housing Act. This research examines several questions critical to assisting housing providers to address the new guidance from HUD. Findings provide direction for housing providers on understanding recidivism risk rates, using useful lookback periods, considering risk and harm across crime types, and verifying rehabilitation and other evidence to design informed policies and procedures for using criminal records in admission decisions for assisted housing.

Evaluating the Impacts of an Enhanced Family Self-Sufficiency Program

We conduct an impact analysis of the Denver, Colorado, Housing Authority’s Home Ownership Program (HOP) employing quasi experimental methodologies (i.e., nearest-neighbor matching, inverse probability weighting with regression adjustment) that permit causal inferences of program impacts with substantial confidence. HOP is an unusual, enhanced variant of the Family Self-Sufficiency program that incentivizes and assists participants’ purchase of a home. We analyze whether, compared with the control group, HOP participants exhibited significantly greater earnings growth during the program, enhanced economic security, and rates of home buying. We find that participants with a high intensity of treatment showed significant improvement in all outcomes. Results are robust to model specification and insensitive to omitted variable bias typically found in the social sciences. We conclude that a well-conceived and well-executed public housing authority program aimed at building the financial, human and social assets of low-income households receiving housing assistance can yield substantial benefits to participants.

Future Prospects for Public Housing in the United States: Lessons From the Rental Assistance Demonstration Program

This article provides an overview of the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program in the United States and examines its early implementation from its start in 2013 through April 6, 2016. RAD was devised to address the physical deterioration of public housing and secure a more stable funding stream. It requires public housing authorities to shift properties out of the public housing program into a different subsidy program (project-based Section 8) which enables them to obtain mortgages on more favorable terms and to secure tax-credit investment. The program is currently limited to 185,000 housing units. As of April 6th, the program was fully subscribed, and had generated more than $2 billion in new investment. Extrapolating from the early results, RAD has the potential to yield more than $15 billion for fund the redevelopment and renovation of public housing.

Under-Propertied Persons

Property shapes the way we talk about our communities and ourselves. It also, unintentionally, shapes the way we talk about the poor. Within property, the doctrine of waste reinforces notions of autonomy, privacy, and boundary-making for property owners, while leaving those without property searching for other ways to assert these self-defining protections. Likewise, nuisance assists owners’ participation in their communities by dictating when individuals must account for harms their property use causes to neighbors. The law, however, provides few legal remedies for poor persons who are harmed by owners’ sanctioned use of property. Through the language of ownership, property doctrines facilitate special benefits for those with property, while forcing those outside of property to seek other means to assert similar benefits. Owners -- landlords of gap rentals, public housing authorities, and cities -- often treat their poorest residents as problems to be managed rather than residents deserving autonomy and community. Housing units are destroyed, families are displaced, and homeless are forced further out of sight. The doctrines and rules that encourage these outcomes focus on the improper, the impaired, or the imperfect instead of facilitating discourse about how living environments promote human flourishing for these residents. In this way, our property system’s rules and language create a class of persons who are under-propertied, under-housed, and under-valued.

Delivering on the Promise of Smoke-Free Public Housing.

On November 30, 2016, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) published a final rule mandating that public housing authorities it supports prohibit all smoking on their residential premises, including within residents' apartments. The primary rationale for this action was to protect nonsmoking residents from the harms of tobacco smoke exposure. Although the harms of secondhand smoke are clear and the potential for reducing nonsmoking residents' exposure is real, it will be no simple matter to successfully implement the policy requirements set down by HUD. Some challenges to policy implementation will apply to all public housing authorities, and others will be unique to specific settings. By being aware of the benefits of smoke-free public housing as well as the challenges inherent in complying with HUD's rule, public housing authorities stand the best chance of fulfilling the potential of this major policy initiative to significantly improve public health in a vulnerable population.