New housing has become a dream for most Americans. In its place is housing rehabilitation--an ideal vehicle for providing lower-cost, conveniently located, and environmentally sensitive shelter for the 1980s. How can its delivery capacity be ensured? Where is it most economical? How can citizen, city, and developer interests be synthesized? This edited volume brings together for the first time the why, where, and how of this vital housing strategy. It details private-public rehabilitation efforts of the past three decades, and from this experience presents how gen-trification and economic problems can be addressed, and proven production and financing strategies effected. The materials are grouped as follows: retrospective view, economic and financial perspectives, construction and administrative procedures, and policy approaches. It includes selections by Henry Aaron, John Kenneth Galbraith, William Grigsby, Michael Stegman, George Sternlieb, and other experts. The book is of vital interest to government officials, planners, attorneys, developers, lenders, and consumers, and is ideal for textbook use in urban planning, real estate, finance, and public administration courses.

The Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program (RRAP) was announced by the Government of Canada in the spring of 1973 and became operational the following year. It came about because of the dual recognition that the existing housing stock represented an important national asset that needed to be preserved, and that a significant portion of this stock was substandard and occupied by households unable to afford necessary repairs. Over the following 26 years, more than 600 000 dwellings, mostly comprised of self-contained homeowner and rental units, but also a good number of beds in hostels, dormitories, special care facilities and rooming houses, were repaired with RRAP assistance across all regions and areas of the country. During this time, RRAP demonstrated great versatility in adapting to the priorities of the day in achieving a broad range of public objectives from improving the housing conditions of low-income Canadians, neighourhood improvement and employment generation, to meeting the special needs of persons with disabilities and the homeless. This history is divided into two main parts. The first recounts the evolution of RRAP from its inception to the present day. The second part explores the evolution of critical aspects of RRAP related to need, its design, management and accomplishments, and concludes with an epilogue which reviews reasons for RRAP's durability and explores the need for targeted housing rehabilitation programs in the future.

Published proceedings of second national housing conference sponsored by Canadian Council on Social Development held in November 1973 to make June 1973 revisions to NHA programs work and to allocate available funds to numerous projects. In attendance were government housing offices, housing advocates, and citizens. The conference focussed on rehabilitation of already-existing housing to counter the previous governmental (both federal & provincial) emphasis on new housing starts and emphasized rehabilitation as the only true social housing policy to resolve housing needs of low & moderate income families.