Public Housing Home-ownership Will It Work and for Whom?

Programs designed to sell conventional public housing units to low-income families are both new and controversial. This article reviews arguments for and against selling public housing to the residents and presents the results of an evaluation of the Public Housing Homeownership Demonstration. This HUD demonstration involved seventeen public housing authorities that designed separate programs to sell 1,315 public housing units to tenants. The results support several of the arguments both for and against public housing homeownership programs. The article concludes with policy recommendations for designing future public housing homeownership programs.