Research on New York City's Housing Problems.

A report on the first nine months of RAND's program of research and policy analysis for New York City's Housing and Development Administration. Most city officials perceive four major housing problems: not enough housing is being produced; rents and prices in the uncontrolled inventory are too high; the controlled inventory is badly undermaintained and the City's housing stock is rapidly deteriorating; many neighborhoods are rapidly deteriorating as middleclass whites move to the suburbs. RAND work has begun in three areas: (1) gathering data and information on housing inventory and urban renewal programs operating in the city to support the implementation of a planning, programming, budgeting system grouped by the incomes of the families the programs are designed to serve; (2) gathering cost and benefit data on publicly-assisted housing programs; and (3) studying housing and neighborhood deterioration. In all three areas, the basic barrier to policy analysis and program evaluation is lack of current and comprehensive data and of a general model of the City's housing market. The next few months should be very fruitful in terms of new data which, in turn, will be helpful in formulating the model. 9 pp.