New Updates on The Edge

Message from PD&R Leadership:
Purpose Built Tools
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research makes a number of data tools available to the public. Todd M. Richardson, acting general deputy assistant secretary for PD&R, describes seven such tools and their uses. The newest tool, the RAD Minority Concertation Analysis Tool, is designed to help public housing agencies participating in the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) determine if a given location is minority concentrated, according to HUD's site and neighborhood rules.

Research:
Housing Cost Burden Among Housing Choice Voucher Participants
The newly published report by the Multidisciplinary Research Team, Rent Burden in the Housing Choice Voucher Program, used administrative data from HUD's Public and Indian Housing Information Center to examine trends in housing cost burden for Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) participants between 2003 and 2015. The research article summarizes findings from the study, including that housing cost burdens for HCV participants have risen since 2003, with housing cost burdens being particularly high for the lowest income participants.

In Practice:
DeKalb County, Georgia, Uses Rental Assistance Demonstration Program to Expand Housing
In 2014, the Housing Authority of DeKalb County, Georgia, chose to convert its entire housing portfolio using HUD's Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD). RAD allowed the housing authority to demolish and replace its largest property, renovate an additional development, and build five new projects. One of these new projects was The View, an 80-unit, mixed-income apartment building for seniors in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Completed in 2015, The View has 75 units affordable to low-income households, and boasts numerous aging-friendly amenities.

Trending:
Disaster Recovery and Resilience
In September 2017, the Urban Institute convened a panel titled "Hurricane Relief and Recovery: Fostering Human and Physical Infrastructure Resilience." The panelists discussed how governments should approach rebuilding communities and planning for future disasters, and explored topics including developing resiliency through predisaster planning, strategies for building leadership capacity, and ensuring equity in the recovery process. You can read more about the panel discussion in the Trending article.

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