Margery Austin Turner, Center Director

As Congress renewed its attention to distressed public housing, we wrapped up our seven-year HOPE VI Panel Study and released briefs on how the demolition and revitalization of severely troubled projects affected the original residents. We concluded that, though the costs of redeveloping these projects are high, the costs of inaction may be even higher. We testified before Senate and House subcommittees on housing about the effect of HOPE VI and ways to improve the program.

Our sixth edition of Housing in the Nation’s Capital offered the first regionwide examination of the challenges facing people with special housing needs—including people with disabilities, the frail elderly, and homeless individuals and families. Our research found a lack of affordable special-needs housing and a highly fragmented system to match people with housing. As the region’s population ages, the demand for special-needs housing and services will rise dramatically, and our report calls upon area governments to start working together to expand both private-sector capacity and public-sector assistance.

This year, we completed research on four Small Business Administration programs designed to serve business owners who would not otherwise find financing. We found little overlap between SBA and conventional lending.Rather, SBA serves minority-owned, women-owned, and start-up businesses that are creditworthy but that nevertheless can’t obtain credit elsewhere.

In 2007, we also continued our work on the crisis of affordable housing in the Gulf Coast after hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We assessed the challenges facing low-income renters who want to return home and inventoried promising policies and programs from across the country that could help address these challenges.