ABSTRACT
Persons with disabilities present special challenges for housing policy. This chapter provides a brief review of challenges of housing people with special needs and of most important federal programs designed to meet these challenges. It is important to emphasize that many elderly and disabled people also benefit from other housing programs, including public housing, housing choice vouchers, and 205 CDBG and HOME block grants, that are not targeted to particular population groups. Politically, housing programs for persons with special needs, the elderly in particular, face far less opposition than other low-income housing programs. Moreover, the elderly may require different types of housing assistance than other low-income households do. Since the late 1990s, the program has allowed non-profit groups to augment their capital advances with additional sources of funding, including low-income housing tax credits, to build additional units or provide higher quality units.
