First Take: Public Housing Per Unit or Per Capita Subsidy Costs are Lowest of HUD Assisted Rental Programs in Oregon, 2008.

HUD has recently posted data on subsidized housing in 2008 HERE.

For first time geographic specific information can be downloaded and analyzed. You can download the data code book/dictionary HERE and the introduction HERE.

I did a quick download of Oregon statewide data and made some additional calculations, including some per capita calculations of "spending"/subsidy and total "rent" (paid by tenant, including utilities).

It may surprise SOME , but using this data, Oregon PUBLIC HOUSING appears to have the LOWEST subsidy cost to HUD (This was true even when household size is used to calculate per capita "spending"/subsidy costs):

• Public Housing "spending" /subsidy costs (which may NOT include capital spending were $292 per household).
• Voucher "spending"/subsidy costs were $698 per household for vouchers (this may NOT include admin fees).
• Project based new construction/sub rehab Section 8 "spending"/ subsidy costs were $522 per household.

(While the lower cost for public housing may surprise some, note that HUD FY 2011 budget is asking for MORE money to convert existing public housing to a form of project based voucher. Note also that most public housing has no /little debt, allowing lower subsidy costs)

I have pasted my initial Oregon table below:

Metric	All HUD	Public Housing	Voucher	S8 NC/SR	S236	MF/Other
total_units	N/A	3,936	N/A	5,098	748	1,676
number_reported	25,206	3,206	15,261	4,249	865	1,625
people_per_unit	2.0	2.2	2.3	1.3	1.9	1.3
people_total	51,375	6,896	35,204	5,523	1,657	2,095
rent_per_month	$ 286	$ 240	$ 322	$ 226	$ 241	$ 233
CALC: rent per capita	$ 143	$ 109	$ 140	$ 174	$ 127	$ 179
spending_per_month	$ 581	$ 292	$ 698	$ 522	$ 457	$ 273
CALC: Spending Per Capita	$ 291	$ 133	$ 303	$ 402	$ 241	$ 210
CALC: Rent +Spending Per Month	$ 867	$ 532	$ 1,020	$ 748	$ 698	$ 506
CALC: PER CAPITA Rent +Spending Per Month	$ 434	$ 242	$ 443	$ 575	$ 367	$ 389
Household Income	$ 11,600	$ 12,100	$ 12,000	$ 10,400	$ 11,200	$ 10,900

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog