HOPE VI

What Is HOPE VI?

HOPE VI was a federal program that gave competitive grants to public housing agencies to tear down or overhaul their most troubled developments. Its formal name was the Revitalization of Severely Distressed Public Housing program. Congress created it in 1992. It began as a demonstration funded through HUD’s FY 1993 appropriations law and ran under annual appropriations laws until Congress formally authorized it in 1998, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).

It answered the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing. The commission’s 1992 report labeled 6% of public housing, then about 86,000 units, as severely distressed. Those properties had high crime, low employment, few opportunities for residents and poor physical conditions, CRS reports.

How HOPE VI Worked

Housing agencies competed for grants covering demolition, rehabilitation, new construction and resident services. As CRS summarizes HUD’s goals, the program aimed to:

• Replace high-rise projects with attractive units that blend into the surrounding neighborhood
• Reduce concentrated poverty by lowering density and promoting mixed-income housing
• Build partnerships with other agencies and local governments
• Improve management, enforce strict eviction rules and help residents become self-sufficient

Housing agencies used the grants to attract other public and private money, including equity raised by selling Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. Some original residents received housing vouchers to rent in the private market instead of returning.

HOPE VI also arrived as an older rule disappeared. Federal law had required that each public housing unit removed be replaced, a requirement known as one-for-one replacement. CRS reports that demolitions rose markedly in the mid-1990s, when HOPE VI began and Congress suspended and then repealed that requirement.

Results and Status

Through FY 2010, HUD had awarded 268 revitalization grants, by CRS’s count. A 2004 review by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute described the roughly $5 billion program as among the most ambitious urban redevelopment efforts in U.S. history.

Funding fell sharply in the 2000s. Congress began funding a successor, the Choice Neighborhoods initiative, in FY 2010, and in FY 2012 and FY 2013 it funded only Choice Neighborhoods. The HOPE VI statute now bars any assistance after September 30, 2017.

Criticisms and Limitations

HOPE VI is credited with demolishing some of the worst public housing and replacing it with higher-quality, mixed-income communities. It also drew sustained criticism:

• Fewer public housing units. CRS describes HOPE VI as at least partly responsible for the decline in the number of public housing units nationwide.
• Displacement. The program was criticized for how it displaced existing residents, concerns that CRS says helped drive funding cuts.

Comparisons with urban renewal are common, although HOPE VI rebuilt public housing sites rather than clearing private neighborhoods. Its successor, Choice Neighborhoods, was designed to extend the approach beyond public housing to other distressed neighborhoods, with stronger requirements for relocating tenants.