Public housing was an integral part of the New Deal, as the
federal government funded public works to generate economic
activity and offer material support to families made destitute by
the Great Depression, and it remained a major element of urban
policy in subsequent decades. As chronicled in New Deal Ruins,
however, housing policy since the 1990s has turned to the
demolition of public housing in favor of subsidized units in
mixed-income communities and the use of tenant-based vouchers
rather than direct housing subsidies. While these policies,
articulated in the HOPE VI program begun in 1992, aimed to improve
the social and economic conditions of urban residents, the results
have been quite different. As Edward G. Goetz shows, hundreds of
thousands of people have been displaced and there has been a loss
of more than 250,000 permanently affordable residential units.
Goetz offers a critical analysis of the nationwide effort to
dismantle public housing by focusing on the impact of policy
changes in three cities: Atlanta, Chicago, and New Orleans.
Goetz shows how this transformation is related to pressures of
gentrification and the enduring influence of race in American
cities. African Americans have been disproportionately affected by
this policy shift; it is the cities in which public housing is most
closely identified with minorities that have been the most
aggressive in removing units. Goetz convincingly refutes myths
about the supposed failure of public housing. He offers an
evidence-based argument for renewed investment in public housing to
accompany housing choice initiatives as a model for innovative and
equitable housing policy.
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