Kill Faircloth Amendment To Recapture Social Housing Promise In America

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, and
Bernie & AOC photo by Senate Democrats is licensed under CC BY 2.0 Deed
Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking for the green new deal in 2018. In 2024, their green new deal is about public housing.

Welcome to the Brave New World of a “Green New Deal’ for housing.

Over the last thirty-odd years two major English language nations have demonstrated effective ways to slowly squeeze the life out of housing for those too poor to realize national dreams of ‘home ownership for all.’

In the United Kingdom, the Conservative government in 1980 passed legislation that gave teeth to a largely theoretical Right To Buy and began parting company with the large stock of council owned social rent housing. This led to the eventual loss of 2,000,000 publicly owned housing units1.

The value of the program was presented as the fulfillment of a national citizen dream. There was no inclination in the face of this dream fulfillment to use all or any of the sale proceeds to refurbish, replace or expand the remaining housing. Why not?  Conservative political attitudes at the time mirrored those in America.

The United States took another route to squeeze the life out of its Public Housing. It was caught up in legislation that included the famous Faircloth Amendment.

A 2021 story in NEXT CITY describes Faircloth’s nature and its intent, quoting Republican Senator Bob Dole who said that Public Housing was “one of the last bastions of socialism in the world, ” and called for its elimination. Since that time, activists in the United States attempting to argue the value of Public Housing and its tenants have been left to wail in the wilderness.

At the time of Faircloth, a majority of US legislators felt that the nation could not afford to support a communist-inspired collection of welfare bums. Public Housing was effectively, if unofficially, condemned as failed program.

The Faircloth Amendment, which passed in 1998, limited the construction and refurbishment Public Housing. The maximum number of Public Housing units could not exceed the quantity that existed across the nation on October 1, 1999. Read more in NEXT CITY: What Is the Faircloth Amendment?

Times have changed, and an ever-deepening national housing crisis has produced a growing cadre of social activists who question America’s obsessive ‘red menace’ knee-jerk politics. As well, they take aim at the assumption that poorer citizens can be freely accused of crime and degeneracy that is somehow triggered by living in Public Housing.

The latest response to these attitudes and the unreasonable limitations of the Faircloth Amendment is the newly-announced Green New Deal for Housing. It has been introduced by Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, and Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

One of the important foundations proposed by the supporters of the Green New Deal for Housing is to repeal the Faircloth Amendment. Read more in POLITICO: AOC, Sanders unveil ‘Green New Deal’ for housing

Footnotes

  1. Variants of the 1980 program continue to the present day.