A Spectrum of Preservation to Privatization? Public Housing Authorities’ Adoption of the Rental Assistance Demonstration Across the United States

In this paper, we provide the first comprehensive programmatic and place-based overview of public housing authorities’ (PHAs) adoption of the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD), which aims to preserve public housing through public-private financing and operations. We first chronicle the political and functional constraints imposed upon public housing that have culminated in RAD’s adoption. Using novel datasets, we then outline the geographic distribution of RAD’s two components, describe characteristics of PHAs leading and lagging in different types of conversions, detail the characteristics of public housing residents impacted by eventual RAD conversions, and describe the shifting nature of ownership and management of federally subsidized housing under RAD. We find that local capacity appears to play a role in the adoption of RAD and propose that a clear binary between public and private housing does not exist, with RAD involving partnerships of public, non-profit, and profit-driven actors among which primary ownership is distributed in various ways. The promising use of RAD by some PHAs and the trend away from oversight in others suggests a need for stronger monitoring to ensure that public housing’s public benefits remain for federally subsidized renters.