Cityscape : The Rental Assistance Demonstration/The Hispanic Housing Experience in the United States

The Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) was authorized by Congress in 2012 to stem the potential loss of public housing and other subsidized housing units due to the growing backlog of unfunded capital needs. The program converts public housing properties to project-based Section 8 contracts—either project-based vouchers (PBV) or project-based rental assistance (PBRA)—with the expectation that this will provide a more predictable long-term annual funding stream. This should, in turn, allow PHAs to leverage external sources of capital to pay for rehabilitation costs and/or to create capital reserves to ensure that a property remains financially and physically viable. By preserving these affordable housing units, RAD ensures affordable housing units can continue to house assisted families in the future. A central component of RAD is that the conversions should not only benefit future assisted families but also the current residents of buildings undergoing RAD conversion. The program provides residents with rights, including the right to return after rehabilitation and the right to a choice-mobility voucher after living in a converted property.The articles in the Hispanic Housing Experience Symposium span two Cityscape issues and cover a wide range of housing-related research on Hispanic households in the United States, including research on homelessness, subsidized housing, residential segregation, housing supply, and homeownership. Part I of the Symposium, in this issue, focuses on two themes: (1) Hispanic homelessness and (2) residential segregation and the neighborhood context of Hispanic housing experiences