The House on Thursday passed an eight-year renewal of a program designed to rehabilitate or replace dilapidated public housing, despite Bush administration assertions that the program is inefficient and obsolete.

The legislation would add tenant protections and a one-for-one replacement requirement for all public housing units proposed for demolition under HOPE VI program grants. The bill was passed by 271-130.

First, lawmakers adopted by 388-20 a manager’s amendment that would apply the one-for-one replacement requirement to units that were in existence as of Jan. 1, 2005 — a bid to help New Orleans residents displaced from their public housing units by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

Democratic critics have complained that the 15-year-old HOPE VI program too often has been used to demolish unattractive or run-down public housing without building new units.

The bill would require public housing agencies to create mixed-income housing on the sites of demolished low-income housing. Other units developed to replace demolished public housing would have to be built in areas with low concentrations of poverty, to avoid concentrating public housing in low-income neighborhoods.

Members adopted two amendments by voice vote — one to safeguard elderly and disabled HOPE VI tenants from eviction, and another to retain a set-aside for the Main Street grant program, which gives money to smaller communities to develop affordable housing in conjunction with a Main Street revitalization effort.

The House rejected one GOP amendments that aimed to permit demolition of public housing units without replacement of the units and another that would have mandated replacement only for units that were occupied prior to demolition.

First posted Jan. 17, 2008 1:31 p.m.