Community Capitalism: How Housing Advocates, the Private Sector, and Government Forged New Low-Income Housing Policy, 1968–1996

Abstract

The commonly accepted story about the U.S. welfare state is that it developed between the 1930s and the late 1960s and then suffered a series of policy and political setbacks during the 1970s, which triggered a political backlash. Conservative politicians from Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan successfully harnessed white middle-class anger over government programs in order to roll back the welfare state. At first glance, the fate of federal programs that subsidize apartments for low-income tenants confirms this narrative: the federal government created housing programs during the New Deal; it added to them significantly during the 1960s. In the late 1960s and 1970s, bad press, conservative attacks, and policy mistakes triggered cutbacks in the 1980s.