2nd Edition
The Affordable Housing Reader
This second edition of The Affordable Housing Reader provides context for current discussions surrounding housing policy, emphasizing the values and assumptions underlying debates over strategies for ameliorating housing problems experienced by low-income residents and communities of color.
The authors highlighted in this updated volume address themes central to housing as an area of social policy and to understanding its particular meaning in the United States. These include the long history of racial exclusion and the role that public policy has played in racializing access to decent housing and well-serviced neighborhoods; the tension between the economic and social goals of housing policy; and the role that housing plays in various aspects of the lives of low- and moderate-income residents. Scholarship and the COVID-19 pandemic are raising awareness of the link between access to adequate housing and other rights and opportunities. This timely reader focuses attention on the results of past efforts and on the urgency of reframing the conversation.
It is both an exciting time to teach students about the evolution of United States’ housing policy and a challenging time to discuss what policymakers or practitioners can do to effect positive change. This reader is aimed at students, professors, researchers, and professionals of housing policy, public policy, and city planning.
Part 1: Conflicting motivations for housing policy 1. Catherine Bauer, A Citizen’s Guide to Public Housing, 1940 2. William L.C. Wheaton, The Housing Act of 1949, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 1949 3. Charles Orlebeke, The Evolution of Low-Income Housing Policy, 1949 to 1999, Housing Policy Debate, 2000 4. Steven Menendian and Richard Rothstein, with Nirali Beri, The Kerner Commission and Housing Policy, The Road Not Taken: Housing and Criminal Justice 50 Years after the Kerner Commission Report, 2019 5. International Human Rights Committee of the New York City Bar Association, Advancing the Right to Housing in the United States: Using International Law as a Foundation, 2016 Part 2: Defining and measuring housing problems 6. Michael Stone, "What is housing affordability," Housing Policy Debate, 2006 7. Edward Glaeser and Joseph Gyourko, "How do we know when housing is affordable?" Rethinking Federal Housing Policy, 2008 8. Samira Hamidi, Reid Ewing, and John Renne, "How affordable is HUD affordable housing?" Housing Policy Debate, 2016 9. Nancy McArdle and Dolores Acevedo-Garcia, "Consequences of segregation for children’s opportunity and wellbeing," A Shared Future, 2018 10. Samiya Bashir, "Home is where the harm is: Inadequate housing as a public health crisis," American Journal of Public Health, 2002 Part 3: Housing tenures 11. Donald Kruekeberg. The Grapes of Rent. Housing Policy Debate, 2010 12. Shannon Van Zandt and William Rohe. The sustainability of low-income homeownership: the incidence of unexpected costs and needed repairs among low-income homebuyers. Housing Policy Debate, 2011 13. Daniel Immergluck. Old Wine in Private Equity Bottles? The Resurgence of Contract‐for‐Deed Home Sales in US Urban Neighborhoods. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 2018 14. Megan Ehlenz. Making Home More Affordable: Community Land Trusts Adopting Cooperative Ownership Models to Expand Affordable Housing. Journal of Community Practice, 2018 Part 4: Provision of Affordable Housing 15. Rachel G. Bratt, The Quadruple Bottom Line and Nonprofit Housing Organizations in the United States, Housing Studies, 2012 16. Ingrid Ellen, Michael Lens, and Katherine O’Regan. American murder mystery revisited: do housing voucher households cause crime? Housing Policy Debate, 2012 17. Lawrence Vale and Yonah Freemark. From Public Housing to Public-Private Housing 75 Years of American Social Experimentation. Journal of the American Planning Association, 2012 18. Kirk McClure. What should be the future of the LIHTC program? Housing Policy Debate, 2018 Part 5: The meaning of place 19. Stewart Perry, Federal support for CDCs: Some of the history and issues of community control, Review of Black Political Economy, 1973 20. James DeFilippis, Brian Stromberg, and Olivia Williams. W(h)ither the community in community land trusts" Journal of Urban Affairs, 2018 21. Melissa Heil, CDCs in the right-sizing city. Journal of Urban Affairs, 2018 22. Kathryn Howell. Planning for empowerment: upending the traditional approach to planning for affordable housing in the face of gentrification, Planning Theory & Practice, 2016 Part 6: Planning and land use 23. Michael Manville, Paavo Monkonnen, and Michael Lens. It’s time to end single-family zoning, Journal of the American Planning Association, 2020 24. Corianne Payton Scally and J. Rosie Tighe. Democracy in action? NIMBY as impediment to equitable affordable housing siting, Housing Studies, 2015 25. Samuel Stein. Progress for whom, toward what? Progressive politics and New York City’s mandatory inclusionary housing, Journal of Urban Affairs, 2018. 26. Kathryn Howell, Elizabeth Mueller, and Barbara Brown Wilson. One size fits none: local context and planning for the preservation of affordable housing, Housing Policy Debate, 2019 Part 7: Threats to housing security 27. Matthew Desmond. Unaffordable America: Poverty, housing, and eviction. UW-Madison Institute for Research on Poverty, 2015 28. Derek Hyra, Gregory Squires, Robert Renner, and David Kirk. Metropolitan Segregation and the Subprime Lending Crisis. Housing Policy Debate, 2013 29. Walter Peacock, Shannon van Zandt,Yang Zhang, and Wesley Highfield. Inequities in long-term housing recovery after disasters. Journal of the American Planning Association, 2014 30. Deirdre Pfieffer. Rental Housing Assistance and Health: Evidence from the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Housing Policy Debate, 2018 Part 8: Race and fair housing 31. Edward Goetz, Rashad A. Williams, and Anthony Damiano. Whiteness and Urban Planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 2020 32. Andrew Whittemore. The experience of racial and ethnic minorities with zoning in the United States. Journal of Planning Literature, 2017 33. Katrin Anacker. Still Paying the Race Tax? Analyzing Property Values in Homogeneous and Mixed-Race Suburbs. Journal of Urban Affairs, 2010 34. Elizabeth Julian. The Duty to Affirmatively Further Fair Housing: A Legal as well as Policy Imperative. Joint Center for Housing Studies, 2017
Biography
Elizabeth J. Mueller is an associate professor of Community and Regional Planning and Social Work at the University of Texas at Austin.
J. Rosie Tighe is an associate professor in the Department of Urban Studies in the Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University.
"Urgent trends—from the movement for racial justice to intensified economic inequality, back-breaking rents, climate risk, and a paradigm shift in health—have spotlighted housing and affordability in ways not seen since the 1960s. This superb compilation will help newcomers, as well as seasoned practitioners and scholars, navigate classic debates and think beyond them too."
-- Xavier de Souza Briggs, Senior Fellow, The Brookings Institution and co-author, Moving to Opportunity: The Story of an American Experiment to Fight Ghetto Poverty
"For this new edition of The Affordable Housing Reader, editors Mueller and Tighe have assembled a superb collection of timely and essential essays by many of the field’s leading scholars. The volume frames several key debates in affordable housing policy, including its objectives and the forms it should take. "
-- Alex Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States
"Affordable housing is a notoriously complex field. This new edition of The Affordable Housing Reader offers an updated look at some key questions, such as how we define affordability, and the roles of race and community control in the field. It should give a substantial grounding to those who want to understand, and improve, American housing policy."
-- Miriam Axel-Lute, CEO/Editor in Chief, Shelterforce
