Public housing authorities (PHAs) in the U.S. have transformed from entirely public endeavors—using federal funds—to public-private hybrids that must respond to market forces. As the recession began, PHAs were just beginning to experience the full effects of this transition. Using 13 cases studies of the largest PHAs in the Pacific Northwest, this paper outlines activities PHAs undertake in this devolved, market-based context. PHAs make trade-offs among paths that emphasize agency survival, producing housing for the poorest households, identifying as a non-profit housing provider, poverty alleviation, merging with another public agency, or closing. This diversity of responses points to the under-valued attribute of public housing authorities as local organizations with diverse mandates. Dependence on HUD, local charter, and the degree of integration with local government contributed to PHAs’ propensity to develop non-HUD-assisted affordable housing. Even with this creativity, adequate resources are necessary to meet the demand for affordable housing for the poorest households as market conditions change.
Rachel Garshick Kleit is Professor and Section Head of City and Regional Planning in the Knowlton School of Architecture at OSU. Her work has focused on the social impacts of housing on the lives of poor people, especially on the relationship between housing location, neighborhood composition, social networks, and access to opportunity. She has written on the social network impacts of housing programs that mix incomes, the HOPE VI public housing redevelopment program, housing self-sufficiency programs, housing choice processes for low-income people, immigrant and minority experiences of assisted housing programs in the US and on the role of the public housing authorities in the future of affordable housing. Additionally, she has been working on a stream of research addressing poverty more broadly, including the equity impact of economic development policies and the dynamics of fringe banking. She has published in a variety of journals, including Environment and Planning A, Housing Policy Debate, Housing Studies, Journal of the American Planning Association, Journal of Urban Affairs, and Social Networks. She holds a BA cum laude in History with highest honors from Brandeis University, an MA in Urban and Environmental Policy from Tufts University and a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Sponsored by the Precarity and Social Contract Working Group.
For further information, please contact Philip Armstrong (armstrong.202@osu.edu)
