America's Trillion-dollar Housing Mistake : The Failure Of American Housing Policy - 03 edition

Summary: Our low-income housing policy is a mistake," Howard Husock argues, "over the decades, a trillion-dollar mistake. Like so many other misguided anti-poverty programs, it has harmed those it set out to help and has caused serious and continuing collateral damage in our cities." In America's Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake, Mr. Husock lays out his case for opposing subsidized housing. He contends that our housing program failures are not due to minor flaws ...show more that can be easily corrected with new and improved management or new and improved subsidies. The programs, he claims, are flawed at their core and rest on three myths: Myth 1: The free market cannot provide housing for the poor -- a bedrock myth that supports all federal housing programs. Myth 2: By taking profit-driven landlords out of the equation, state-supported housing can offer the poor higher-quality housing. Myth 3: The moral qualities of the poor are a product of their housing environment. The "projects," which first come to mind in thinking of failed housing programs, are only the best-known policy mistakes. Mr. Husock explains how other efforts -- including housing vouchers, community-development corporations, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, and the Community Reinvestment Act -- are just as pernicious, working in concert to undermine sound neighborhoods and perpetuate a dependent underclass. In confronting America's housing problems. Mr. Husock points to the deep but often unappreciated importance of economically diverse urban neighborhoods, and the need to offer privately built "affordable" housing in the historic tradition of the brownstones of Brooklyn, the bungalows of Oakland, and, today, houses built through Habitat for Humanity. He calls for time limits on housing assistance to ensure that government-funded housing provides a springboard to self-sufficiency rather than a complacent lifestyle. "Our task now," he writes, "is to dismantle public housing in a gradual, sensitive, and humane way." ...show less

Edition/Copyright: 03
Cover: Hardcover
Publisher: Ivan R. Dee Publisher
Published: 10/28/2003

View Table of Contents

Introduction
1 We Don't Need Subsidized Housing
2 How Public Housing Harms Cities
3 Let's End Housing Vouchers
4 The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities
5 Don't Let CDCs Fool You
6 How Charlotte Is Revolutionizing Public Housing
7 Take Habitat for Humanity Seriously
Afterword
Index