Public housing is often seen as a program of the past. To the extent anyone talks about it today, the focus is on the need for repairs. New York City, for instance, which runs the nation’s largest public-housing program, has foregone an estimated $40 billion in maintenance.
But public housing sites may offer some opportunities for cities. Across the country, lots of high-value real estate is locked up by public housing. The New York City Housing Authority, for example, estimates the value of the Baruch Houses site on the Lower East Side at $111 million. That’s an outlier, nationally, but valuable public housing sites exist in Philadelphia, in Savannah, Georgia, in the booming Vanderbilt University area of Nashville, and near Buffalo’s potentially lucrative Lake Erie shore.
Read Full Article »