How Democrats Helped To Kill Low Cost Housing

Clinton’s housing policy was part and parcel of welfare reform. Certainly, both federal income assistance and public housing needed changes. But Clinton and Congress adopted a model based in punishment and austerity. He was literally worse than the Republicans at every turn. His version of HOPE VI, the program to demolish and rebuild public housing, removed the very reasonable guarantee of one-to-one replacement of demolished housing.

Clinton was able to use progressive critiques of the worst aspects of federal housing such as the warehousing of the poor in substandard conditions to accomplish the conservative goal of privatizing formerly public housing. 

The Clinton administration argued that public housing was a form of segregation and that the HOPE VI process was a form of integration, essentially fulfilling the promise of the civil rights movement. He was halfway right. Local governments did in fact use public housing programs to reinforce segregation. However, what we saw in the aftermath of HOPE VI was actually a form of resegregation as the displaced just resettled where they could afford to find homes. Simply a different kind of warehousing.

You see this today under the Obama administration as public housing authorities are attempting to implement drastic rent hikes as a perverse incentive toward self-sufficiency. You want people to move towards self-sufficiency? Create good-paying public works jobs and the social supports like childcare and education to make this happen. You can’t essentially apply a Wal-Mart mentality to public policy and expect to change lives with a cheap strategy like this.