A PRRAC program review. By Martha Galvez (2013). The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD’s) Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) provides funds for public housing authorities and other local entities to redevelop distressed public or assisted housing in some of the nation’s poorest neighborhoods. This brief examines one aspect of CNI: HUD and individual grantees’ approach to tenant displacement and relocation. CNI’s primary focus is on neighborhood improvement and the right of existing residents to return, with the expectation that target neighborhoods will offer better quality of life than other areas where low-income renters might live. But the program is also intended to expand fair housing choices for current and future residents by placing some off-site replacement housing in lower poverty neighborhoods and helping families who wish to move away from CNI developments reach higher opportunity areas.
