The challenges facing public housing authorities in a brave new world

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Abstract
Public housing authorities (PHAs) are entering a brave new world. Major proposed changes to the public housing program will force PHAs to compete with private sector providers for tenants. To succeed, they will have to act more like entrepreneurial market participants: to change their management practices, the types of tenants they house, and the kinds of developments they operate, and to attract private capital for the development and operation of public‐private public housing ventures. PHAs must confront the challenges of transformation while pursuing four mutually conflicting goals: housing the neediest, achieving diversity of tenantry, cross‐subsidizing by attracting unsubsidized tenants, and attracting private capital. Success, or even survival, may require sacrificing one or more of these goals. Whether PHAs can increase housing production to such an extent that they can provide sufficient housing for the neediest while fulfilling the other goals as well remains unclear.