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Since taking office, the Administration has virtually eliminated HUD's function as a builder of low-cost housing, choosing instead to spend $5.8 billion on modernizing existing units. Reagan has proposed a private-sector substitute: a housing voucher program, whereby poor families could shop for housing in the private rental market with federally subsidized cash vouchers. The Administration argues that the program will save the Government money and give people more control over their choice of dwellings. Critics charge, however, that the supply of private, low-cost housing is too small, and the opportunities for landlord price gouging and client abuse too great, for the system to succeed. The fiscal squeeze has spurred creative thinking on the local level. San Francisco has arranged for a local commercial developer to renovate, rent and manage 82 units in the Hunter's Point housing project. The developer sets the rents, with housing authority approval, but the apartments must go to low-income tenants. The city strictly enforces an innovative construction policy. Before a developer can get a permit to build a new downtown office building, he must agree to put up new housing or pay a fee that is earmarked for that purpose. Of the $20 million collected since 1981, when the program started, $3 million has been used to renovate two public housing projects. To reduce vandalism and rapid turn over, New York City's housing authority has quietly implemented a policy of "economic integration":
the placement of more middle-income and working tenants in public housing projects. Welfare families fear the change will push them out. But other public housing tenants welcome the prospect of more responsible neighbors. "When you work for your money and you pay your own rent, you appreciate things more," contends Martha Henry, who has lived for 30 years in Manhattan's Dyckman project.
"That's why welfare apartments are different."
Originally designed in the wake of the Depression as a way station for the temporarily unemployed and the working poor, public housing projects are nowadays looked upon as permanent homes for a growing number of very low-income people, most of whom are black, Hispanic or elderly. Nearly 10% of Boston's population lives in public housing. In New York there are 175,000 families on the waiting list. An increase in the number of urban homeless threatens to pressure the system even further. The need for improved programs for funding and managing low-income housing is critical, but until they are developed, existing projects will need to be maintained. HUD estimates it would take $67 billion to replace them. Without public housing or low-cost alternatives, says Carrie Copeland, president of Capitol Homes Tenant Association in Atlanta, "there's nowhere else to go."