The convergence of a global pandemic, a worldwide climate crisis, and growing economic inequality will have a lasting impact on the actions we take to protect lives, reduce disparities, meet energy needs, and prepare for disasters. These events have catalyzed a rethinking of how we manage, improve, and expand housing supply, strengthen neighborhood infrastructure, and invest in communities to improve life outcomes. In this post-pandemic era, it is widely accepted that housing stability is foundational to the health and well-being of the nation. At the same time, we are faced with rising rents and alarming housing supply deficits. We have a rare opportunity to establish a sustainable future for the public housing portfolio, an essential component of our national affordable housing supply.
CLPHA is calling for a ten-year roadmap for public housing sustainability to marshal the necessary policies, resources, services, and political support to recapitalize the portfolio by leveraging increased and targeted public and private investments through preservation, redevelopment, mixed-used transformations, transfer of assistance, and other innovative strategies. The tools, methods and mechanisms needed to bring leveraged public and private investments to public housing have been developed over the years. We need a strategic framework for committing resources and developing policies to scale that make buildings and neighborhoods sustainable platforms for improving life outcomes for residents.
Public housing authorities (PHAs) are our nation’s most effective affordable housing delivery system, serving over 3.3 million households under the public housing and Housing Choice Voucher programs, with over one million of these households including children. Additionally, over half of public housing and voucher households are headed by a senior or a person with disability.
These policy priorities reflect the challenges facing large PHAs, who manage an undercapitalized and overregulated public housing portfolio facing not only an $100 billion capital needs backlog, but also housing supply shortages, escalating rents and increasing demand for housing assistance. Despite these burdens, PHAs provide crucial housing assistance in their communities through owning, managing and improving public housing, making the private rental market affordable through housing vouchers, and developing new affordable housing through public and private partnerships. PHAs are lifelines for the households and communities they serve.
With most COVID funding and waivers expired, PHAs face serious operational challenges due to tight rental markets, high inflation, rising construction and maintenance costs, labor market shortages, and insufficient funding. Evidence emerging from the pandemic experience demonstrates that robust social safety net programs are critical to protecting our most vulnerable individuals, children, seniors and people with disabilities- making deep cuts to these programs indefensible.
To ensure CLPHA’s members have the tools and resources to fulfill their missions, CLPHA’s 2024 priorities are:
- Develop and fund the Public Housing Ten-Year Sustainability Plan to recapitalize the aging public housing portfolio
- Improve and expand the Housing Choice Voucher program to better serve local markets and special-needs households
- Increase affordable housing supply using new incremental vouchers coupled with LIHTC expansion
- Expand and incentivize cross-sector collaborations that improve the life outcomes of assisted households and address racial disparities and inequities