Is there negative rent in Puerto Rico?

Welcome to public housing in Puerto Rico, a realm of high intentions and low outcomes. The island has America’s second-largest public housing system, after New York’s. Roughly 125,000 people inhabit 54,000 apartments, paying rent according to a federal formula: Rent, plus utilities, must be no more than 30 percent of a household’s adjusted income.

Paychecks here are small, and the tenants’ rents are never enough to cover the system’s costs. So Washington subsidizes the rest, currently to the tune of $254 million a year.

It isn’t the housing that’s making Ms. Ramos want to leave. It’s the crime and a culture of cheating.

“Negative rent!” she exclaims. “It doesn’t exist in other parts of the world, but in Puerto Rico, sí!”

Public housing experts say “negative rent” is theoretically possible; Ms. Ramos says she sees it all around her. She pays to live in the projects, but other people have found ways to be paid.

That is from Mary Williams Walsh at the NYT.  And here is some more detail on negative rent:

Federal Housing and Urban Development records say that 36 percent of the families in Puerto Rico’s housing projects have incomes of zero. By law, tenants with no income must pay $25 a month. This turns into “negative rent” when their electric bills are factored in.

That’s because Washington gives public housing tenants a “utility allowance,” which is normally deducted from their rent. But if someone is paying just $25 a month, for example, and gets a utility allowance of $65 a month, they’ll end up with a “negative rent” of $40. It’s paid in cash.

Some people pocket the money and stiff the Electric Power Authority, a government monopoly with a bad track record for bill collections. The Power Authority is responsible for $9 billion of the government’s $72 billion debt. It could use the money.

Ms. Ramos suspects that if rates go up, Washington will send bigger utility allowances — and people living on “negative rent” will get more money.

Solve for the equilibrium, as they say…

Comments

Comments for this post are closed