The Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) Final Report analyzes whether RAD preserves affordable housing by improving physical conditions and stabilizing the financial footing of properties. The report also examines how tenants and PHAs are impacted by the program. This evaluation meets Congress's requirement to report on the early observable impacts of RAD on (1) the preservation and improvement of former public housing units; (2) the amount of private capital leveraged as a result of such conversion; and (3) the effect of conversion on residents.

" Over the next several years, rental assistance contracts will expire for about 38,000 affordable housing units currently subsidized through three HUD rental programs. Owners of these units would no longer be required to maintain affordable rents or make their units available to low-income residents. Residents in these units are eligible to receive special tenant-based vouchers called tenant-protection vouchers to shield them from resulting rent increases. HUD's RAD program was created in 2011 to preserve affordable housing by, among other things, allowing owners to convert these tenant-protection vouchers to project-based vouchers for units in three designated HUD programs. Project-based vouchers result in a long-term contract between the property owners and PHAs, which administer the vouchers. The Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act of 2012 mandated that GAO review these conversions under RAD. This report describes the results of these conversions.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)'s Section 811 Project Rental Assistance (PRA) Program provides rental housing assistance to nonelderly people with disabilities. In this second phase of its evaluation of the PRA program, HUD sought to determine the impact of the program on residents' housing tenancy and use of home and community-based services, characteristics of properties and neighborhoods where assisted residents live, and residents' healthcare diagnoses and utilization. In order to assess the program's effectiveness, the study compared short-term outcomes of the PRA program against outcomes for residents in the Section 811 Capital Advance/Project Rental Assistance Contract program (referred to as PRAC in this report), outcomes for people with disabilities in other HUD rental assistance programs, and outcomes for a group of similar people who receive Medicaid but are not assisted by HUD programs.The evaluation found that the PRA program assists people who are different from people with disabilities in HUD's other housing assistance programs in their demographic characteristics, the types and sizes of properties they live in, and the characteristics of the neighborhoods where they live. PRA residents have lower incomes, have more chronic and disabling conditions, and are more likely to have had long-term stays in inpatient settings. Looking at early outcomes for a sample of units in just six states, both housing unit and neighborhood quality are lower for PRA units than for PRAC units. PRA units have greater access to public transportation and are in neighborhoods with greater walkability, but PRA residents do not feel as safe in their neighborhoods.