peak years, between 1968 and 1973, subsidized housing production
accounted for over 16 percent of all housing starts nationwide.
Clearly, federal housing subsidies have been an important
contributor to overall housing production. In addition, experts now
suspect that rehabilitation efforts, most of them privately
sponsored, helped avert the "rental housing crisis" expected in the
1970s.
The largest
federal housing program covers public housing projects, with a
total of 1.4 million units. The second largest is the Section 8
subsidy (similar to the voucher program), with a total of 1.2
million units. (See Appendix E for a list of all
hud and
fm
ha programs and the units they provided as of April 1986.)
As shown in Table 6, federal support for housing has diminished
over the past nine years. From a high of $31.7 billion in 1979,
hud budget authority
dropped to $7.5 billion in 1989.
TABLE 6
hud Net New Budget
Authority and Net New Units, 1975-1989
| Fiscal Year |
Net New Budget Authority
(Billions) |
Net New Units |
| 1975 |
$13.2 |
131,444 |
| 1976 |
28.8 |
516,721 |
| 1977 |
28.0 |
388,413 |
| 1978 |
31.5 |
326,026 |
| 1979 |
31.7 |
325,075 |
| 1980 |
27.2 |
251,021 |
| 1981 |
30.2 |
217,185 |
| 1982 |
17.4 |
35,864 |
| 1983 |
8.7 |
5,223 |
| 1984 |
9.9 |
75,353 |
| 1985 |
10.8 |
88,980 |
| 1986 |
9.5 |
33,000 |
| 1987 |
7.5 |
81,500 |
| 1988 |
7.7 |
82,314 |
| 1989 (estimated) |
7.5 |
86,501 |
| 1990 (requested) |
7.6 |
109,000 |
| Source:
hud Budget as
reported by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. FY89 figures
are estimates; those for 1990 are proposed in the President's
budget and include funds to modernize public
housing. |
Private
foundations have also been important in supporting innovative
programs and in stimulating large-scale public intervention in the
housing field. Since 1980 more than $100 million in
housing-related