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Published on: 4/16/2007
Last Visited: 4/16/2007
Beginning with the 2008 calendar year, HUD will use a new formula to calculate annual operating subsidies for every public housing authority in the U.S. With this new method, based on the results of a 2003 Harvard Graduate School of Design study, NYCHA and other large, old housing authorities are losing out, according to Sonia Zaterman, executive director of Washington, D.C.-based public housing advocacy group Council of Large Public Housing Authorities.
"New York state, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and a lot of the northeastern cities will be subject to very significant cuts in their current subsidy levels," Zaterman said.She added that because the Harvard study based its numbers on federally subsidized but privately owned developments rather than public housing - which has special regulations and additional costs that private owners don't have to deal with - it suffered from "significant methodological flaws."
"They were saying, 'we think that certain housing authorities should have their subsidies lowered and another two-thirds should either remain neutral or have their subsidies increased,'" Zaterman said, "Particularly in the west, southwest, and in the south, where their subsidy levels have been traditionally very low."