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I'm not sure why there is this increasing centrist hand-wringing over a possible revival of public housing. Even supporters like me feel that that revival is far off. But here we are, with this flawed piece from Brookings today. https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2021/01/14/four-reasons-why-more-public-housing-isnt-the-solution-to-affordability-concerns/
This article has a lot of issues. First off, the very premise it is based on is quite odd. "But repealing Faircloth won't fix anything" is no less reductive and dishonest than "but upzoning won't fix everything!" Nobody is arguing either of those. Can we leave this in 2020?
The first of 4 arguments is rather curious, as there is nothing public-housing specific about it. Yes, land shortages and single-family zoning bedevil multifamily public housing, but they also ban LIHTC and fully private multifamily development. Upzoning needed anyway.
A better version of this argument would note that public housing *that is housing of last resort* faces heavier NIMBY opposition. But that is why the social housing conversation is pushing for mixed-incomes. And a state or federal govt can zone however it wants, effectively.
The next argument is better, and is a concern I share. Public Housing authorities and other govt agencies are not in the business of development right now. Any plan for social housing MUST address this capacity issue.
But then the excerpt above goes off on a tangent to complain about procurement. Here's the thing, in high cost cities, local funding means that privately-built LIHTC carries all the same procurement costs. That's not public housing specific.
But I'd add that it is legitimate for citizens to want that public funds address a range of concerns, including labor, energy efficiency, and other requirements that govt $ tends to carry. Why is that inherently worse than that money going to lender and investor profits?
The third argument is about deferred maintenance. It is certainly true that public housing suffers badly on this front. But "slumlord" is a term that came out of conditions in the private rental market. When tenants lack economic and political capital, you get deterioration.
This is an advantage of a mixed-income social housing approach, particularly one with built-in tenant organization and protection strategies. I do not see a clear route to replicating those in private markets, which will always concentrate poverty and defer maintenance when able.
The final argument states that other programs can offer more bang for our $. But the author's argument is rooted in public housing only being pursued via new construction. There's nothing stopping a Project Roomkey/Homekey acquisition approach from being part of social housing.
And of course, there's nothing stopping a program of reversing deferred maintenance in PH from being funded either. There's no magic to RAD (that I worked in!) that is about "private actors" or whatever. These things can happen under a public umbrella.
Overall, I just think the piece misses the mark because it fails to engage with any of the proposals social housing proponents are making, and most of the objections are rooted in hostility to public spending *in general*, not specifically about who owns and who builds.
