Public Housing in the 21st Century Acknowledgements When the New York City Housing Authority turned to Citizens Housing and Planning Council to organize a conversation about the future of public housing and report on the findings, we turned to our supporters for help. Thanks to their long standing commitment to affordable housing, we received generous support and assistance from The Fannie Mae Foundation Citi Community Capital Goldman Sachs, Public Sector Investment Group We gratefully acknowledge their role in carrying out this work. We also thank the New York City Housing Authority for its invaluable collaboration in this effort. Sincerely, The Board and Staff of Citizens Housing and Planning Council 1 2 Contents Acknowledgments 1 Contents 3 PH21 Roundtable Participants 4 A Note from the Co-Chairs 5 Introduction 6 Presentations PHAs and Capital Markets 9 Housing Supply, Housing Need, and the Role of Public Housing in NYC 9 Public Housing Reforms in the United Kingdom 11 Three Public Housing Case Studies 12 Survey Respondents 14 Survey Findings 15 Roundtable Findings 18 Recommendations 21 CHPC Board of Directors 22 3 PH21 Roundtable Participants Roundtable Co-Chairs Doug Apple, General Manager New York City Housing Authority Alicia Glen, Managing Director Goldman Sachs & Co. Tino Hernandez, Chairman New York City Housing Authority Jerilyn Perine, Executive Director Citizens Housing and Planning Council Panelists Ray Adkins, Senior Business Developer Fannie Mae Richard D. Baron, Chairman and CEO McCormack Baron Salazar Rafael Cestero, Senior Vice President Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. Kurt Creager, Principal Urbanist Housing Solutions Shaun Donovan, Commissioner NYC Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development Mary Brennan, Senior Vice President Community Preservation Corporation Paul Graziano, Housing Commissioner Baltimore Housing Carl Greene, Executive Director Philadelphia Housing Authority Jon Gutzmann, Executive Director St. Paul Housing Authority Barbara Holston, Executive Director Fort Worth Housing Authority Sarah Hovde, Research and Policy Analyst Low-Income Support Coalition (LISC) Marc Jahr, Metro New York Market Director Citigroup Lucille McEwen, President & CEO Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement Rudy Montiel, Executive Director City of Los Angeles Housing Authority Steve Norman, Executive Director King County Housing Authority Harold Shultz, Senior Fellow Citizens Housing and Planning Council Bill Traylor, President The Richman Group Facilitator David Jackson, President and CEO Atlanta Center for Working Families Inc (TCWFI) PH21 Project Leaders Jeffrey Otto, Senior Policy Analyst Citizens Housing and Planning Council Silvett Garcia, Ginsberg Research Fellow Citizens Housing and Planning Council David Lipsetz, Director Strategic Planning New York City Housing Authority Observers and Support Staff Sarah Watson, Senior Policy Analyst Citizens Housing and Planning Council Denali Dasgupta, Research Analyst Citizens Housing and Planning Council Lisa Diaz, Special Assistant to the GM New York City Housing Authority Ilene Popkin, Assistant GM- Development New York City Housing Authority Michelle Pinnock, Deputy GM- Policy New York City Housing Authority Anne Marie Flatley, Deputy Director- Research New York City Housing Authority Lillian Harris, Executive Assistant- Policy New York City Housing Authority Yvette Andino, Assistant Director- Research New York City Housing Authority Diane Rosenthal, Assistant ED- Finance Philadelphia Housing Authority 4 A Note from the Co-Chairs In December of 2007, Citizens Housing and Planning is right to remake public housing for future generations. Council (CHPC) and the New York City Housing Au- thority (NYCHA) convened a roundtable discussion to Although the group assembled was diverse, there was define a new model for Public Housing in the 21st Cen- widespread agreement on the basic principles that should tury with generous support from the Fannie Mae Founda- form the core of a public housing program for the 21st tion, Goldman Sachs Public Sector Investment Group, Century: and Citi Community Capital. • Encourage Financial Innovation The conversation was not designed to address the prob- lems currently facing the existing inventory of public • Design for Mixed Income and Mixed Uses housing, nor the challenges that Public Housing Authori- ties (PHA’s) are encountering in their struggles to preserve • Create Competitive Award Structures it. Rather, eighteen practitioners from around the country came together to contribute their professional knowledge • Maximize Local Flexibility and Minimize HUD and ideas to articulate a program model for the produc- Involvement tion of new public housing that could serve the needs of low and moderate income families. • Assemble Diverse Coalitions of Stakeholders The discussion was framed by four context specific pre- This report presents a summary of the group’s recommen- sentations on best practices, three roundtable breakout dations which we hope will form the basis for a renewed sessions focusing on practical solutions, and results from dialogue. The report also provides a synopsis of the round- a series of interviews CHPC conducted with twenty-six table itself and the process that helped to encourage lively housing professionals who were unable to attend the dis- debate. cussion in person. It is our sincere hope that our work will serve as a catalyst What emerged was a sobering picture. While the need for a nationwide dialogue about a new public housing for affordable housing is acute, most policy makers do program. Thank you for your interest in our project and not consider public housing a viable option for satisfying your contribution to affordable housing. We welcome that need. Public housing has been declared a failure by your comments and look forward to having you join in the the public, law makers, and even many housing advocates. discussion. Instead, advocates put forth a constant stream of housing policies, often emphasizing slogan-filled models for work- Alicia Glen force housing, sustainable communities, and new urban- Managing Director, Goldman Sachs ism. Meanwhile, little attention is being paid to public housing: the most basic model of permanently affordable, Jerilyn Perine publicly sanctioned housing. Executive Director, CHPC By drawing on the considerable experience of leaders in Tino Hernandez affordable housing finance and development along with Chairman, NYCHA the practical skills of innovators from the public housing industry, CHPC and NYCHA believe that a new model Doug Apple can be created and adapted across the country. With new General Manager, NYCHA leadership on its way to Washington and a renewed dia- logue that seeks to bridge the gap between the affordable housing industry and the public housing industry, the time 5 Introduction A quick search on the internet for ‘affordable housing’, ‘workforce housing’, or ‘inclusionary zoning’ results in a dizzying array of councils, committees, coordinators, best practices, and manifestos attesting to their critical impor- tance for towns and cities across America. And yet with all this new focus on making affordable housing available to everyone, the obvious solution to many of these problems has been dramatically overlooked: public housing. At a time when housing shortages, affordability, and rent burdens are rising, many working families find themselves particularly hard hit. In the New York metropolitan re- gion, 25 percent of working families either pay more than 50 percent of their income for rent or live in buildings with three or more maintenance deficiencies.1 Many of Figure 1. Median Rent Burdens by HH Income; Source: New York these problems are endemic to a large number of housing City HVS markets, but there is no question that they are made more acute by the declining support for housing at the federal Despite these facts, the debate around public housing level. From 1937 to 1979, 1.4 million units of federally has largely focused on whether to demolish or save the funded public housing were created in the United States. existing stock of public housing, not how to add to it. Production declined sharply, however, after the Nixon ad- Public housing itself has become the problem for which ministration implemented a moratorium on all new public solutions are sought. PHAs have increasingly focused at- housing development in 1973. Since then, nearly 200,000 tention on financing maintenance gaps for existing units, of those original units have been demolished or sold. not on building new ones. In many places, support for new public housing is minimal despite the fact that it was What is worse, the tremendous innovation that has swept designed to solve the most pressing housing problems the housing and community development industry since faced by low income and working families. It was a criti- the 1980s with the introduction of the Low Income Hous- cal resource for housing returning veterans after World ing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program has left public housing War II and in New York City it was public housing that largely untouched. By some accounts, it was the absence buffered communities from the waves of abandonment in of support for public housing that made this innovation the 1970s and 80s. possible, but at the same time it also prevented the evolu- tion of a more economically viable model for permanently At a time when our nation finds itself in a deep housing affordable housing. 2 crisis, it is time to take account of public housing’s 75 years