HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program (otherwise known as RAD) has, indeed, taken off in a big way this year.
RAD is an Obama-era program that also seeks to reinvest in public housing. RAD, however, does so by transferring it to the private market and offering Section 8 vouchers to tenants. It started with just 60,000 public housing units eligible for transfer; that rose to 455,000 units this year after a brief pit stop at 185,000 units last year. But RAD has been plagued by a lack of comprehensive data and confusion and inconsistencies surrounding its implementation in cities across the country.
A report released by HUD last month details some of the data so far: Nearly a thousand (956) public housing projects have been converted to privately held projects through October 2018. That represents 103,268 units taken out of public control and into privately managed buildings.
The initiative has been a controversial program since its inception. In Minneapolis, activists have pushed back most strongly to the privatization aspect of the program.
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