This Worst Case Housing Needs report is the sixteenth in a longstanding series providing national data and analysis of the critical problems facing very low-income renting families. Households with worst case needs are defined as very low-income renters who do not receive government housing assistance and who paid more than one-half of their income for rent, lived in severely inadequate conditions, or both. The report draws on data from the 2015 American Housing Survey (AHS), which debuted a major redesign that included a new national and metropolitan area longitudinal sample.
Public housing agencies (PHAs) have struggled heroically to maintain the country’s 1.1 million public housing units, but the backlog of capital needs has grown to $26 billion, and there is little hope today that federal resources will rise to meet it. Congress authorized the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) in 2012 to meet this funding challenge.
Executive Summary
Public housing occupies a unique and essential place on the affordable housing spectrum. It is home to about 2.2 million lowincome families, seniors and people with disabilities. A multibillion dollar asset, public housing authorities’ (PHAs) spending on operations and capital improvements also generates significant economic activity.
