Public housing

   

Public housing describes a form of housing tenure in which the property is owned by a government authority, which may be central or local. Although the principles are common, the details of the arrangements differ between countries, and so does the terminology.

Canada

Arrangements and terminology in Canada are similar to those in the United States

Ireland

In Ireland, public housing and halting sites have been built by Local Authorities and are known as Local Authority Accommodation. Dublin Corporation and the former Dublin County Council provided the lion's share of Irish Local Authority Housing, with County Longford having the largest ratio of Local Authority to private housing in the state.

New Zealand

In New Zealand, public housing is referred to as State housing

Singapore

In Singapore, public housing is made by HDB.

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom public housing is often referred to as "council housing" and "council estate," and is described in the article on that subject. Local not-for-profit housing associations have begun to operate some of the older council housing estates in the United Kingdom.

United States and Canada

In the United States and Canada, public housing is usually a block of purpose-built housing operated by a government agency. Most housing communities were developed from the 1930s onward. Houses, apartments or other residential units are usually subsidized on a rent-geared-to-income (RGI) basis. Some communities have now embraced a mixed income, with both assisted and market rents, when allocating homes as they become available. Large multi-story buildings, often in large groups of similar buildings were popular government designs of the 1950s and 1960s. These are often called housing projects or "the projects."

In recent years, many such projects have been torn down, renovated or replaced after criticism that the concentration of poverty in economically depressed areas, inadequate management of the buildings, and government indifference have contributed to increased crime. Indeed, US public housing continues to have a reputation for violence, drug use, and prostitution, leading to the passage, in 1996, of a federal "one strike you're out" law, calling for the eviction of project tenants whose housing units are the scene of certain types of criminal activity, especially that which is drug-related.

In 1997, the top providers of US public housing, according to HUD were:

In reaction to the problems surrounding public housing, the US Congress passed legislation enacting the "Housing Choice Voucher Program" (better known as Section 8) in 1974, which Richard Nixon signed into law. This kind of housing assistance, known as "tenant-based" (as opposed to "project-based" or "conventional public housing"), assists poor tenants by giving a monthly subsidy to their landlords. The Administration has recently proposed controversial changes to the Housing Choice Voucher Program.

Some US public housing developments

  • Atlanta
    • Techwood Homes First projects in the nation. Located in downtown Atlanta south of the campus of Georgia Tech. Torn down for Olympics and turned into Centennial Place Apartments.
  • Chicago
    • Robert Taylor Homes was the largest public housing development in the world - 28 buildings of 16 stories each, housing 20,000 people. Robert Taylor is virtually no more, thanks to the Chicago Housing Authority's Transformation Plan.
    • Cabrini-Green
  • Detroit
    • Herman Gardens
  • New York
  • St. Louis
  • Seattle

External links

Retrieved from "http://www.centipedia.com/articles/Public_housing"

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