PROVIDENCE — Public housing has never had a particularly good reputation. Advocates say that ill-informed critics see the projects as havens for crime, overcrowding and long-term poverty, and ignore the strides made in recent years.

But now that public perception, flawed or not, may be costing public housing money in Washington, with a federal government that local housing officials say does not recognize the desperate need for public housing — and the good it does — in states such as Rhode Island.

Local housing authorities are strapped for cash, and are having trouble maintaining the buildings they have. They say that in the president’s proposed budget for fiscal 2008, they will receive only 82 percent of what they need to maintain operations. It is only the latest reduction, as money for public housing has been declining for years.

This latest round, they say, is too much.

The Providence Housing Authority, the state’s largest, will lay off eight workers next week. Last year, it fired 26. Soon, workers will begin taking month-long unpaid furloughs to save money.

“We’ve made the cuts, introduced the copays, done layoffs. It’s getting to the point where it’s actually starting to affect operations,” said Stephen O’Rourke, director of Providence Public Housing.

O’Rourke said the agency has put off building maintenance, is not making any capital purchases for household items such as cabinets, and is hiring less security this year.

Yesterday, housing authority directors from towns including Coventry, Providence, and Newport came together with mayors from Providence, Johnston, Central Falls, and over 200 public housing residents and supporters at Conley’s Wharf on Allens Avenue to try to draw attention to the issue.

The National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials has selected Providence as one of eight media markets to conduct an awareness campaign on affordable-housing issues — lumping greater Providence in with much bigger cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and San Diego.

Rhode Island suffers from many of the problems of the larger cities because it has housing costs that are more often associated with urban areas around Boston, New York and San Francisco — but without the economy and wages of those world-class cities. That leaves single working people of low to moderate income often struggling to pay the rent.

And at the national level, the Bush administration has not made supporting public housing a priority, said Johnston Mayor Joseph M. Polisena.

“We’re sending billions and billions of dollars abroad to people who hate us, but we can’t help the people in our own country. They need to get serious about funding these programs,” he said.

Part of the problem in getting support, advocates say, is the negative image of public housing, and the perception in many other states that there is little or no demand for it.

“There’s an old perception of public housing. Some of it’s true,” said James Reed, executive director of the housing authority of Newport. But, he said, “We’ve only got a small amount of households on public assistance. Our welfare rolls are diminishing.”

And contrary to assumptions that public housing is crowded with large families, the average family size per apartment is 1.8 persons, O’Rourke said.

Between housing and Section 8 vouchers, there are 32,000 people in Rhode Island taking advantage of some form of public housing. But O’Rourke said that they are not looking to build more housing — they are simply saying that they want to retain what they have, in order to protect those who depend on public housing now.

“The current situation is terrible. We’re not here saying ‘let’s get more public housing.’ We’re saying, ‘Let’s preserve the investment,’ ” O’Rourke said.

Officials were quick to point out that members of the Rhode Island congressional delegation have been staunch supporters of affordable-housing programs. It’s the rest of Congress they’re worried about, they said.

Representatives from other states often do not realize the demand for housing that exists in a high-rent, urban and suburban area like Rhode Island, said Richard Godfrey, director of Rhode Island Housing. He said that on the few occasions that Rhode Island Housing has opened up its waiting lists, it has had lines of thousands waiting outside their sign-up points. O’Rourke said the same about Providence housing’s waiting lists.

“Anyone who says there is enough funding for affordable housing in America is either lying or they have their eyes closed,” Godfrey said.

dbarbari@projo.com