
American government: point that urgent finger at yourselves. Your citizens need YOU to recreate a public housing program!
Articles like the one linked below have been scarce to nonexistent in the American media over the last few decades. It is an intelligent presentation in a prominent national publication. And it makes the case that America can’t solve its affordable housing crises without public housing.
In America these days, unlike most everywhere else in the world, public/social housing is reviled. An experiment in poorly conceived, badly managed public housing for the most vulnerable in society, American public housing has certainly presented some ugly sides of itself to the public, all the way from the government experts and the legislatures that supported them at the top, down the the building managers and tenant behaviours at the bottom.
But few if any countries except America, even with their own histories of expensive financial and social missteps, have simply written off public housing completely. And for good reason. It is perhaps the only way to deliver the quantity and quality of housing that is desperately needed by low-income and no-income citizens everywhere.
Why has the potential of public housing been so ignored, and how could it help dramatically to ease current housing crises in America?
Read more about why the US needs to rethink its attitude to public housing in The Nation*: The Case For Public Housing
*The Nation is paywalled. As a progressive publication which generates a cornucopia of thought-provoking articles about American issues, it is well worth a subscription. However, the paywall does allow a small number of viewer reads per month. For those interested in the future of public housing in America, this article alone is worth, if not a full subscription, a free read. If you’ve run out of them, save one up for next month!