Renters Rising and the Center For Popular Democracy have published a vision document for social housing advocates in the United States: Social Housing For All.
The document sets the stage by recounting the demise of public programs that shaped the housing market, laying the responsibility firmly at the feet of decision makers and the public policies.
For example, median incomes of public housing tenants in 1950 were 57% of national median incomes. By 1970, that proportion had dropped to 29%. It dropped further still to 17% by the 1990’s. As a consequence, the amount of revenue to support public housing that came from tenants effectively dropped over this period. At the same time, public funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development was also dropping. Between 1981 and 1989, HUD’s funding was cut by 80%1.
The report recounts and thoroughly documents the uneven impacts of changes in housing policy and funding programs, whereby White people gained and Black people, Indigenous people and people of colour lost, not once or twice, but over and over again.
Social Housing For All next articulates 14 principles to undo these losses. Here are two examples:
- Universality, While Prioritizing The Most Marginalized – Social housing at scale should be universally available to all low- and moderate-income households who seek it. To begin with, production and preservation should first prioritize meeting the needs of the lowest-income households, communities of color, and other marginalized groups.
- Democratic Community Control – Social housing should be under permanent public or non-profit ownership and democratic control. It should be developed, owned, managed, and operated through entities that are democratically accountable to the public, residents, and marginalized communities.
The next part of the report is taken up with examples of policies and programs to implement the principles. One of the programs is repairing existing public housing. Implementing the principles means a public housing renovation program where:
- public housing tenants have a say in the renovations of their building,
- public housing tenants do the renovation work and are paid decent wages for their work, and
- residents have a say in the operation of the building, post renovation.
Social Housing For All is very comprehensive. It is a detailed aspirational document for anyone who sees housing for people with very low incomes as a social issue as well as for people working to make more social housing a reality. Some might say that it’s excessively Utopian, but a clear description of an alternative future is a helpful tool in that work.
NPQ has a review of Social Housing For All, which you can read here: Social Housing Report Outlines Path to Affordable Housing for All
The full report is published by the Center For Popular Democracy: Social Housing For All
