America's Persistent Housing Crises: Errors in Analysis and Policy

Abstract

During the 1970s, the media headlined one housing crisis after another. Concern about these alleged crises tended to disappear as more dispassionate and less well-publicized follow-up studies demonstrated that the claims had been exaggerated. Nearly all comprehensive government and academic evaluations of housing problems and policies during the decade reached the same conclusions about the nature of the nation's housing problems and offered identical recommendations about desirable changes in housing policy. All found that housing conditions improved steadily in the postwar period, that the improvement was largely caused by a rapid growth in per capita and household incomes, that government programs made a minor contribution at best, and that existing housing programs and policies were both inequitable and inefficient. As the fraction of households living in substandard housing declined, moreover, the housing problems of poor persons were increasingly recognized as problems of poverty. All evaluations argued in favor of a reduction in housing subsidies for middle-and low-income households, a shift away from production programs, and greater reliance on cash grants that would provide assistance to low-income households in acquiring standard housing. In spite of this near unanimity of findings and policy recommendations, the nation's housing policy has consistently followed a different course.