This year marks the 50th birthday for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. We are officially middle aged. We’ve seen what works and learned from mistakes, and over the last several years, we’ve been using that experience to adapt and prepare for the next 50 years.
Atlanta is a quintessential example of how HUD is working with cities to position themselves for the future. That’s why, earlier this month, I joined business and community leaders, academics and housing experts at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights to discuss how HUD works every day to support the people we serve through a network of programs.
Some of these programs were born out of Atlanta’s housing successes, like Centennial Place, and others are new, but Atlanta is benefiting in the pilot round. Atlanta is a historic city for housing and one on the cutting edge.
Harvard economists Raj Chetty and Nathaniel Hendren published research this year showing that where a child grows up directly and profoundly affects his or her lifetime earning potential. We have been preparing for research like Chetty’s to confirm what we’ve known for years: That we can have an important effect on a child’s life simply by improving her home environment.
To address these issues, we have implemented three strategies to move folks out of poverty and onto a path of higher earning potential and healthier lives. All of these initiatives leverage public-private partnerships, and some are cost-neutral to the federal government.
First, the Harvard research shows that when families move out of high-poverty neighborhoods when children are young, those kids’ lifetime earning potential is strikingly higher. HUD’s Housing Choice Vouchers ramp up that mobility to low-poverty neighborhoods, increasing the likelihood that today’s children will not be HUD constituents as adults.
Second, for families who choose not to leave their high-poverty neighborhoods, HUD and private funders are collaborating to rehabilitate public housing that has gone unrepaired for years. Our Rental Assistance Demonstration program, started in 2012, doesn’t cost the federal government and is making a big difference, allowing some housing authorities to make decades’ worth of repairs in just a few years. In three years, RAD has leveraged more than $1 billion in new construction dollars at RAD public housing properties.
Along with RAD, Choice Neighborhoods, an initiative grounded in the HOPE VI program that sparked Atlanta’s successful Centennial Place revitalization, rehabilitates not just properties, but whole neighborhoods.
What became apparent to all Americans following the recent events in Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., is that many communities are defined by their poverty rather than their potential. The Choice Neighborhoods program, launched in 2010, recognizes what President Barack Obama has rightly noted: that we need a holistic approach to healing these communities. Atlanta was just awarded a $30 million Choice Neighborhoods grant, from which it raised an additional $215 million from public and private sources.
Third, for families in high-poverty neighborhoods, we must offer tools to achieve success. The Internet is increasingly a critical tool for success in the 21st century global economy. Today, 15 percent of Americans still cannot reach the Internet, many of them due to cost and availability.
That’s why we launched the ConnectHome pilot initiative earlier this year, which accelerates Internet adoption in 28 communities including Atlanta, providing broadband access and electronic devices like tablets to children living in public and assisted housing. Working with private-sector partners, the pilot program will reach more than 275,000 low-income households across the nation.
The AARP is giving HUD its very own AARP card, issued to all 50-year-olds. But far from being retired, and like a lot of baby boomers, HUD is experiencing a second wind. We’re using what we’ve learned over the last 50 years to pivot to the next 50 years. We are committed and energized and smarter than ever. Middle age isn’t so bad at all.
Julian Castro is secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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