PETRA

No, not PETA, but PETRA.  Preservation, Enchancement and Transforming Rental Assistance is the proposal to modernize rental assistance.  Among its more controversial aspects is the proposal for public housing authorities to, in essence, privatize their buildings.

Peter Dreier has a guest blog at TPM in which he summarizes the history of public housing and discusses whether or not public housing has a future.  It's a thoughtful discussion on some of the pros and the cons of the PETRA proposal.

I know that Barbara Sard, who used to work for the Center on Budget & Policy Priorities, is now involved with HUD.  She's a brillant woman who has been deeply involved in housing policy analysis for many years.  Her being part of this process gives me more confidence in the outcome, but:

"As the National Low-Income Housing Coalition stated in its Congressional testimony: 'Private resources could be public housing's savior or its greatest enemy."

It's a good read.