Review Essay: Rethinking the Retrenchment Narrative in U.S. Housing Policy History

For examples of the retrenchment narrative, see Paul Pierson, Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment (Cambridge, 1994), esp. ch. 4; Michael E. Stone, Shelter Poverty (Philadelphia, 1993); David C. Schwartz, Richard C. Ferlauto, and Daniel N. Hoffman, A New Housing Policy for America(Philadelphia, 1988); Rachel G. Bratt, Rebuilding a Low-Income Housing Policy (Philadelphia, 1989); and Chester Hartman, Between Eminence and Notoriety: Four Decades of Radical Urban Planning (New Brunswick, N.J., 2002). For those who argue that housing has never had much state support, see John F. Baumann, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian, eds., From Tenements to the Taylor Homes (University Park, Pa., 2000); and Peter Marcuse, “Housing Policy and the Myth of the Benevolent State,” in Critical Perspectives on Housing, ed. Rachel G. Bratt, Chester Hartman, and Ann Meyerson (Philadelphia, 1986), 248-63. A handful of scholars admit, hesitantly, that the rhetoric of retrenchment was not matched by fiscal realities. See Harold Wilensky, Rich Democracies: Political Economy, Public Policy, and Performance(Berkeley, Calif., 2002), 221-26, 730-32; and Barbara Gottschalk and Peter Gottschalk, “The Reagan Retrenchment in Historical Context,” in Remaking the Welfare State: Retrenchment and Social Policy in America and Europe, ed. Michael K. Brown (Philadelphia, 1988).

For a defense of the private housing market, see Howard Husock, America’s Trillion-Dollar Housing Mistake (Chicago, 2003); and Peter D. Sahlins , “Comment on Chester Hartman’s ‘The Case for a Right to Housing’: Housing Is a Right? Wrong!” Housing Policy Debate 9, no. 2 (1998): 259-266. For an earlier homebuilder history, see Joseph B. Mason, History of Housing in the U.S., 1930-1980: Fifty Years of American Progress (Houston, Tex., 1982).

Kenneth T. Jackson , Crabgrass Frontier (New York, 1985), 190-21 8; and Arnold R. Hirsch , “Searching for a ‘Sound Negro Policy’: A Racial Agenda for the Housing Acts of 1949 and 1954,” Housing Policy Debate 11, no. 2 (2000): 393-441.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, “Trends in Worst Case Housing Needs for Housing, 1978-1999” (December 2003), xix, 7, http://www.huduser.org/Publications/PDF/trends.pdf. Worstcase needs are defined as “unassisted renters who pay more than half their income for housing or live in severely substandard housing.” The literature in this area draws conclusions far more pessimistic than data would suggest. Michael Stone, for example, has proposed an alternative measure of affordability that generates far higher proportions of the “shelter-poor,” to use his term. Yet, his charts on shelter poverty still suggest more stability than dramatic change throughout time. His figure 5.3, for instance, suggests that 30 percent of households were shelter poor in 1970 and the same 30 percent were shelter poor in 1991. Likewise, figure 4.7 covers the years 1945 to 1970 and also suggests little change throughout time. See Stone, Shelter Poverty, 109, 142. Similarly, data from the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University suggest only a slight change. In 1975, the first year for its data, renters spent 26.2 percent of income on gross rent. That figure rose to a high of 29.4 percent in 1993, and then fell back in 2000 to 26.5 percent—nearly the level of 1975. Since then, it has risen to 29 percent in 2003. Again, none of this suggests dramatically worsening trends. See Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University, “The State of the Nation’s Housing, 2004” (2004), table A-1, 31, http://www.jchs.harvard.edu/publications/markets/son2004.pdf.

See Charles F. Casey-Leininger , “Giving Meaning to Democracy: The Development of the Fair Housing Movement in Cincinnati, 1945-1970,” in Making Sense of the City: Local Government, Civic Culture, and Community Life in Urban America, ed. Robert B. Fairbanks and Patricia Mooney-Melvin (Columbus, Ohio, 2001); Gregory D. Squires, ed., From Redlining to Reinvestment: Community Responses to Urban Disinvestment (Philadelphia, 1992); and Gregory D. Squires, ed., Organizing Access to Capital: Advocacy and the Democratization of Financial Institutions (Philadelphia, 2003).

Ingrid Gould Ellen ,Sharing America’s Neighborhoods: The Prospects for Stable Racial Integration(Cambridge, Mass., 2000); and Edward L. Glaeser and Jacob L. Vigdor, Racial Segregation in the 2000 Census: Promising News, Brookings Institution Survey Series, April (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2001), http://www.brookings.edu/es/urban/census/glaeser.pdf, 1-16.

For a review of Vale’s first book, From the Puritans to the Projects (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), see D. Bradford Hunt, “Why Did the Working Class Reject Public Housing in America?” Journal of Planning History 2, no. 1 (February 2003): 79-93.

Vale joins an impressive list of scholarship in the past two decades on public housing in various cities, including Eugene Meehan, The Quality of Federal Policymaking (Columbia, Mo., 1979); Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940-1960 (New York, 1983); John F. Baumann, Public Housing, Race, and Renewal: Urban Planning in Philadelphia, 1920-1974 (Philadelphia, 1987); Robert Fairbanks, Making Better Citizens: Housing Reform and Community Development Strategy in Cincinnati, 1890-1960 (Champaign, Ill., 1988); Ronald Bayor, Race and the Shaping of Twentieth-Century Atlanta (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1996); and Raymond Mohl, “Making the Second Ghetto in Metropolitan Miami, 1940-1960,” Journal of Urban History 21 (March 1995): 395-427. Missing here, of course, is a comprehensive history of the New York City Housing Authority.

Of course, some projects do have strong tenant leadership. For an example, see Roberta Feldman and S. Stall, The Dignity of Resistance: Women’s Residents’Activism in Chicago Public Housing (Cambridge, 2004).

This list is neither complete nor intended to cast aspersions on those who have perpetuated this myth; instead, it gives a sample of the kinds of blanket statements regarding housing cuts at HUD that are grossly misleading. See Schwartz, Ferlauto, and Hoffman, A New Housing Policy for America, 47-51; John I. Gilderbloom and Richard P. Appelbaum, Rethinking Rental Housing (Philadelphia, 1988), 77-78; Eric Addison, “HUD: The Real Scandal,” Journal of Housing 46, n o. 6 (November 1989): 287; William G. Johnston, “Housing Policy under the Reagan Administration: The Demise of the Iron Triangle,” Policy Studies Review10, no. 4 (Winter 1991/1992): 70; Charles H. Moore and Patricia A. Hoban-Moore, “Some Lessons from Reagan’s HUD: Housing Policy and Public Service,” Political Science & Society 23, no. 1 (March 1990): 14; Gregory D. Squires, Capital and Communities in Black and White(Albany, N.Y. 1994), 46; Peter Drier and John Atlas, “U.S. Housing Policy at the Crossroads,” Journal of Urban Affairs 18, no. 4 (1996): 344; James D. Wright, Beth A. Rubin, and Joel A. Divine, Beside the Golden Door: Policy, Politics, and the Homeless (New York, 1998) 79; and Sudhir Venkatesh, American Project (Cambridge, Mass., 2000), 112, 148, 274.

Colton’s figure 3.23 (p. 157) includes data (not analyzed in the text) on the number of assisted housing units, showing a healthy increase in the 1980s. Figure 5.4 (p. 236) is also helpful and shows outlays but, again, without discussion in the text. Figure 5.12 (p. 243), however, has a meaningless trend line because it combines budget authority and outlays in each year into a single bar to chart spending. The effect is to add “apples and oranges.”

Sidley’s footnote for this statistic appears to be slightly mistaken. The correct citation is Dennis R. Judd and Todd Swanstrom, City Politics, 4th ed. (New York, 2004), 191. In any event, the statistic is entirely misleading about actual federal spending. Judd and Swanstrom almost certainly used Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government (Washington, D.C., various years), table 5.3, “Percentage Distribution of Budget Authority by Agency.” But choosing table 4.2, “Percentage Distribution of Outlays by Agency,” from the same source tells a different story. From 1978 to 1994, HUD grew at the same rate as the overall federal budget; its portion of federal outlays rose from 1.7 percent in 1978 to 1.8 percent in 1994. During this period, total federal outlays grew from $459 billion in 1978 to $1,462 billion in 1994. Outlays are by far the more important measure.

Clyde Haberman , “Reality Check during Time of Mourning,” New York Times, June 8, 2004, B1-B1. For similar statistics, see David Lazarus, “Downside of Reagan Legacy,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 9, 2004, C1; and Peter Dreier, “Urban Suffering Grew under Reagan,” Newsday, June 10, 2004.

Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables, Budget of the United States Government: Fiscal Year 2005, table 8.8, 147-52, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/hist.pdf.

U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means , 2000 Green Book: Background Material and Data on Programs within the Jurisdiction of the Committee on Ways and Means(Washington, D.C., 2000), table 15-30, 942-956.

For a primer on various budget terms, especially budget authority and outlay, see Office of Management and Budget, Analytic Perspectives, Budget of the U.S. Government, Fiscal Year 2005(Washington, D.C., 2004), 383-87, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/spec.pdf.

For the best discussion of how HUD budget authority could be cut dramatically while outlays continued to rise faster than the rate of inflation, see U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Ways and Means, 2000 Green Book, 942-56; and Grace Milgram, Trends in Funding and Numbers of Households in HUD Assisted Housing, Fiscal Years 1975-1990, Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service Report 90-266E, May 1990.

Even those who report both budget authority and outlays dramatically overplay the first and neglect the second, either by dismissing the outlay figures or by burying them in a table without comment. See Edward B. Lazere, Cushing N. Dolbeare, Paul A. Leonard, and Barry Zigas, “A Place to Call Home: The Low Income Housing Crisis Continues” (Washington, D.C., 1991), 30-35; Paul R. Allen Hays, The Federal Government and Urban Housing(Albany, N.Y., 1995), 235-44; Stone, Shelter Poverty, 160-61; Mary Nenno, Ending the Stalemate (Lanham, Md., 1996), 21-22; and Judd and Swanstrom, City Politics, 192. For a more balanced presentation of both data for the Clinton years, see Rachel Bratt, “Housing for Very Low-Income Households: The Record of President Clinton, 1993-2000,” Housing Studies 18, no. 4 (July 2003): 610-12.

Available data show that HUD operating subsidy outlays to local public housing authorities were $929 million in 1981, $1.489 billion in 1988, and $3.116 billion in 1998, representing overall growth faster than inflation. Some years in between, however, did see slight reductions in outlays from the previous year: 1984, 1986, 1996, and 1997. Data from Office of Management and Budget, “Public Budget Database,” in Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2005, http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/db.html.