Public Housing

Program Summary and Purpose:

Public housing, housing owned by the government, has long been used in an attempt to alleviate America’s chronic shortage of low-income housing. While public housing projects are owned by HUD, each unit is maintained by an individual public housing agency. These public housing agencies maintain and operate the housing. Today, there are more than 1.1 million public housing units in the United States. Of these, many are completely filled and have waiting list times exceeding ten years. All tenants in public housing are low income (with at least 40% of tenants identifying as extremely low income). Generally, public housing tenants pay 30% of their monthly income for their rent.

Each public housing agency receives two annual grants from the federal government: an operating subsidy and a capital subsidy. While the operating subsidy supplies the difference between what residents can pay in rent and what it actually costs to operate the housing unit, the capital subsidy is used for development, construction, and rehabilitation of housing units.

What Advocates Need to Know:

Public housing advocates should be focused on maintaining the federal budgets for both the capital subsidy and the operating subsidy. For FY11, advocates should ask congress to fund the public housing operating fund $5.084 billion.

Current Status:

For FY10, the public housing capital fund is set at $2.5 billion and the operating fund is set at $4.78 billion.

For more information on Public Housing programs, please visit:

National Low Income Housing Coalition. 202-662-1530.

National Housing Law Project. 510-251-9400.

Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. 202-408-1080.