A Nobel-prize-winning economist, three former officials of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, the head of one of the city’s largest social-service agencies, and the chairman of the tenants council of a Harlem public housing project are among those offering at least guarded support for the idea of turning apartments in the city’s public housing projects over to the tenants to own or sell.

The concept, floated on May 15 in a New York Sun editorial, “Paupers to Millionaires,” envisions giving about 200,000 residents of the city’s low-income public housing units ownership of their apartments, which often sit on high-priced land. The tenants, who average a 17.7-year stay, could then decide whether to keep or to sell their apartments, some of which could fetch as much as $1 million.

“I don’t like public housing — I think I should be privately held, and I think this is a good way to get it into the hands of the private sector,” a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago, Gary Becker, said in a telephone interview. “These houses deteriorate quickly and badly over time, so giving them away would certainly be better than most other proposals.”

A former New York regional administrator for the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, Sam Moseley, said that the idea was considered when he worked at the agency in the 1980s, and he believes it would have numerous positive effects, including improving neighborhood character. “People that have a stake in their neighborhood tend to do a better job of maintaining the neighborhood,” Mr. Moseley said.

A professor at Baruch College and an assistant secretary for policy development at HUD in the Reagan administration, Emanuel Savas, also offered praise for the idea, saying that it is feasible to a certain degree.

Mr. Savas said he examined the implementation of a similar concept in Great Britain in the early 1980s, when Prime Minister Thatcher sold public housing units known as “council homes” to tenants at a discount rate.

“You actually could walk down the street and see which ones of these had been privatized — they were just better taken care of,” he said.
The CEO of the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, William Rapfogel, voiced support for the concept, calling it “a creative idea that could prove effective in creating wealth among the poor.” Mr. Rapfogel added that he believes the initiative should be tried on a small scale before going citywide.

The idea also received support from a housing expert at the Manhattan Institute who has long advocated privatization of public housing, Howard Husock, who called it a “plausible starting point.”

A man who served as assistant secretary of HUD between 2001 and 2005, John Weicher, said that the economics of the proposal could work for New York, especially for units located in areas with real estate values, like Manhattan.

“I think if you gave somebody the property and said here it is,” Mr. Weicher said, “the sensible thing to do is to sell and move.”

The only Council Member thus far officially to declare his intention to run for mayor, Tony Avella, said the approach was “out of the box, which is what we really need,” though he did not take a position on the idea.

Many housing experts said that many of the individual tenants who would be beneficiaries would likely be strong supporters, and the president of the tenants association at the 131 St. Nicholas Avenue public housing project, Gloria Wright, called the concept “a good idea for working families.” Ms. Wright added that it could be hard on seniors who did not want to move or sell their apartments.

Others were critical of the idea, arguing that it would cut down on the amount of “affordable housing” in the city at a time when prices are skyrocketing.

When asked about the concept last week, Mayor Bloomberg expressed skepticism about the idea of giving away the city’s public housing supply. “I think it is part of the mix of the kinds of housing for the mixture of people that live and we want to keep here,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “The public shouldn’t do everything, but the private sector shouldn’t do everything either.”

Mr. Bloomberg added, in respect of public housing, that he wants “to make sure that it is self supporting. It is not quite at the moment and that’s a problem we’re going to have to work on.”

A council member who grew up in the city’s public housing, Rosie Mendez, was disapproving of the idea, saying that while it would create a windfall for one group of residents, almost 200,000 permanently affordable units would disappear from the city’s affordable housing stock. Further, Ms. Mendez said the giveaway would lead tenants to be “asset rich but penny poor,” unable to afford the maintenance costs of their apartments.

Housing advocacy groups tended to take a similar position, maintaining that the need for long-term affordability outweighs the benefits from the onetime nest egg the idea would create for tenants.

“We would hope that there are ways that people could move out of the income brackets that people are born into, but you also have to preserve an affordable housing stock,” the executive director of the housing advocacy group Good Old Lower East Side, Damaris Reyes, said.

The idea also received criticism from Mayor Giuliani’s commissioner of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, Jerilyn Perine. While Ms. Perine said the city should better promote home ownership for residents of public housing, giving away the existing units without replacing them would do harm to the city’s affordability efforts, she said.

A spokesman for the federally funded agency that manages the city’s public housing, New York City Housing Authority, Howard Marder, said the subsidized apartments offer “good, basic, sound, secure housing,” and there is no good reason to give away the units.

While other cities are razing housing projects and building mixed-income, low-rise housing in their place, Mr. Marder said the city’s public housing is better maintained and managed than projects in the rest of the country, warranting a continued investment.