The Public Works Administration (PWA), part of the New Deal of 1933, was a large-scale public works construction agency in the United States headed by Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes. It was created by the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933 in response to the Great Depression. It built large-scale public works such as dams, bridges, hospitals, and schools. Its goals were to spend $3.3 billion in the first year, and $6 billion in all, to supply employment, stabilize buying power, and help revive the economy. Most of the spending came in two waves, one in 1933–1935 and another in 1938. Originally called the Federal Emergency Administration of Public Works, it was renamed the Public Works Administration in 1935 and shut down in 1944.
The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is one of the executive departments of the U.S. federal government. It administers federal housing and urban development laws. It is headed by the secretary of housing and urban development, who reports directly to the president of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet.
Section 8 of the Housing Act of 1937, often called Section 8, as repeatedly amended, authorizes the payment of rental housing assistance to private landlords on behalf of low-income households in the United States. 68% of total rental assistance in the United States goes to seniors, children, and those with disabilities. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development manages Section 8 programs.
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) is a public development corporation which provides public housing in New York City, and is the largest public housing authority in North America. Created in 1934 as the first agency of its kind in the United States, it aims to provide decent, affordable housing for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers throughout the five boroughs of New York City. NYCHA also administers a citywide Section 8 Leased Housing Program in rental apartments. NYCHA developments include single and double family houses, apartment units, singular floors, and shared small building units, and commonly have large income disparities with their respective surrounding neighborhood or community. These developments, particularly those including large-scale apartment buildings, are often referred to in popular culture as "projects."
Public housing in Puerto Rico is a subsidized system of housing units, mostly consisting of housing projects, which are provided for low-income families in Puerto Rico. The system is mainly financed with programs from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the US Department of Agriculture USDA Rural Development. As of 2020, there were 325 public housing developments in Puerto Rico.
The Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) is an agency that provides affordable housing for low-income families in Atlanta. Today, the AHA is the largest housing agency in Georgia and one of the largest in the United States, serving approximately 50,000 people.
The Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA) is a municipal authority providing Public housing services in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The National Housing Conference (NHC) is an American non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C. established in 1931.
The American Housing Act of 1949 was a landmark, sweeping expansion of the federal role in mortgage insurance and issuance and the construction of public housing. It was part of President Harry Truman's program of domestic legislation, the Fair Deal.
The Housing Act of 1937, formally the "United States Housing Act of 1937" and sometimes called the Wagner–Steagall Act, provided for subsidies to be paid from the United States federal government to local public housing agencies (LHAs) to improve living conditions for low-income families.
In the United States, subsidized housing is administered by federal, state and local agencies to provide subsidized rental assistance for low-income households. Public housing is priced much below the market rate, allowing people to live in more convenient locations rather than move away from the city in search of lower rents. In most federally-funded rental assistance programs, the tenants' monthly rent is set at 30% of their household income. Now increasingly provided in a variety of settings and formats, originally public housing in the U.S. consisted primarily of one or more concentrated blocks of low-rise and/or high-rise apartment buildings. These complexes are operated by state and local housing authorities which are authorized and funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). In 2020, there were one million public housing units. In 2022, about 5.2 million American households that received some form of federal rental assistance.
The Mutual Ownership Defense Housing Division of the Federal Works Agency, an agency of the United States government, operating from about 1940 to 1942 under the leadership of Colonel Lawrence Westbrook, was an attempt by the United States Government, late in the New Deal, to respond to the housing needs facing defense workers and develop housing projects for middle-income families utilizing the cooperative/mutual housing ownership concept. Under pressure by entrenched real estate interests and intense and competing resource needs caused by World War II, the Division lasted for only two years. As stated in the Second Annual Report of the Federal Works Agency:
"As a group, defense workers were also poor candidates for individual home ownership because the duration of their employment was uncertain, and because few of them had savings adequate to finance the downpayment on new homes. Recognizing these characteristics, attention was given early to some special form of housing to meet squarely the economic problem of the defense worker and one which, at the same time, might lead to an ultimate solution of the housing problems of millions of other American families of similar economic status."
Non-profit housing developers build affordable housing for individuals under-served by the private market. The non-profit housing sector is composed of community development corporations (CDC) and national and regional non-profit housing organizations whose mission is to provide for the needy, the elderly, working households, and others that the private housing market does not adequately serve. Of the total 4.6 million units in the social housing sector, non-profit developers have produced approximately 1.547 million units, or roughly one-third of the total stock. Since non-profit developers seldom have the financial resources or access to capital that for-profit entities do, they often use multiple layers of financing, usually from a variety of sources for both development and operation of these affordable housing units.
Charles Forrest Palmer was an Atlanta real estate developer who became an expert on public housing and organized the building of Techwood Homes, the first public housing project in the United States. He would later head up both the newly created Atlanta Housing Authority and the Chamber of Commerce.
The Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (HACM) is a municipal agency of Milwaukee, Wisconsin dedicated to providing public housing and services for residents of the city of Milwaukee. The agency was established in 1944 and is responsible to a board of commissioners appointed by the mayor.
Queen Lane Apartments opened in 1955 as one of several Post-War public housing hi-rise complexes in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania which were built and maintained by the Philadelphia Housing Authority (PHA). The PHA demolished the Queen Lane high-rise on September 13, 2014. The PHA replaced it with 55 new, affordable rental units for individuals and families. The first of the new 55 units were opened on December 15, 2015. Mayor Michael Nutter, City Council President Darrell L. Clarke, City Councilwoman Cindy Bass, PHA President/CEO Kelvin Jeremiah, residents of the nine new units, and other dignitaries joined together to cut the ribbon.
Moving to Work (MTW) is a demonstration program for public housing authorities (PHAs) that provides them the opportunity to design and test innovative, locally designed strategies that use Federal dollars more efficiently, help residents find employment and become self-sufficient, and increase housing choices for low-income families. MTW gives PHAs exemptions from many existing public housing and voucher rules and more flexibility with how they use their Federal funds. PHAs can use special funding formulas for MTW agencies and permit agencies to shift funds between the programs or to other uses.
The Rental Assistance Demonstration is a federal housing program that was enacted as part of the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2012, and is administered by the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD). Broadly, the purpose of the Rental Assistance Demonstration is to provide a set of tools to address the unmet capital needs of deeply affordable, federally assisted rental housing properties in order to maintain both the viability of the properties and their long-term affordability. It also simplifies the administrative oversight of the properties by the federal government. Specifically, RAD authorizes the conversion of a property's federal funding from one form to another, where the initial form presents structural impediments to private capital investment and the new form is not only familiar to lenders and investors but, since its enactment in 1974, has leveraged billions in private investment for the development and rehabilitation of deeply affordable rental housing.
The Holyoke Housing Authority (HHA) is a public agency of the city of Holyoke, Massachusetts that provides subsidized public housing to low- and moderate-income families and individuals.
The San Francisco Housing Authority is a local public housing authority for the City and County of San Francisco that was established in 1938 after the Housing Act of 1937 was enacted by the U.S. Federal Government. The agency is responsible for the management of public housing and Section 8 vouchers for primarily low-income housing. While the agency is based in and has jurisdiction over San Francisco, it is operated independent of the city's government and is chartered by the state government of California.
