by Brianna Crandall — February 17, 2016—U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro just announced HUD is allocating more than $1.8 billion to public housing authorities in all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia, Guam, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands, to make needed capital improvements in their properties.
The newly announced grants are provided through HUD’s Capital Fund Program, which offers annual funding to approximately 3,100 public housing authorities to build, repair, renovate and / or modernize the public housing in their communities. These housing authorities use the funding to complete large-scale improvements such as replacing roofs or making energy-efficient upgra;des to replace old plumbing and electrical systems.
To help provide residents with decent, safe and sanitary housing and respond to the growing demand for affordable rental housing, the Obama Administration proposed the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD), a comprehensive strategy that complements the Capital Fund Program and offers a long-term solution to preserve and enhance the country’s affordable housing stock, including leveraging public and private funding to make critically needed improvements.
For more than 75 years, the federal government has been investing billions of dollars in developing and maintaining public housing – including providing critical support through the Capital Fund grants just announced. Nonetheless, there has been a net loss of over 135,000 public housing units since fiscal year 2000, representing an average loss of approximately 9,000 units annually, notes HUD.
In 2011, HUD released Capital Needs in the Public Housing Program, a third-party independent study that estimated the capital needs in the public housing stock in the USA. The study found the nation’s 1.1 million public housing units are facing an estimated $25.6 billion in large-scale repairs.
Unlike routine maintenance, “capital needs” are extensive improvements required to make the housing decent and economically sustainable, such as replacing roofs or updating plumbing and electrical systems to increase energy efficiency, explains HUD.
Since Congress authorized the RAD demonstration in November of 2011, early results show it is generating significant additional capital for public and assisted housing. HUD has made awards to 60,000 public and assisted housing units in more than 340 different projects across the country.
Through these awards, housing authorities have proposed to generate approximately $3 billion in capital repairs by leveraging private debt and equity, which will preserve or replace distressed units and support local jobs in their communities – all without additional federal resources.
The HUD news release contains a chart detailing the amount of public housing capital funding by state.
