logo
  • Nonprofit News
  • Management
    • Boards and Governance
    • Communication
      • Framing & Narratives
    • Ethics
    • Financial Management
    • Grassroots Fundraising Journal
    • Leadership
    • Technology
  • Philanthropy
    • Corporate Social Responsibility
    • Donor-Advised Funds
    • Foundations
    • Impact Investing
    • Research
    • Workplace Giving
  • Policy
    • Education
    • Healthcare
    • Housing
    • Government
    • Taxes
  • Economic Justice
    • About
    • Economy Remix
    • Economy Webinars
    • Community Benefits
    • Economic Democracy
    • Environmental Justice
    • Fair Finance
    • Housing Rights
    • Land Justice
    • Poor People’s Rights
    • Tax Fairness
  • Racial Equity
  • Social Movements
    • Community Development
    • Community Organizing
    • Culture Change
    • Education
    • Environment
    • Gender Equality
    • Immigrant Rights
    • Indigenous Rights
    • Labor
    • LGBTQ+
    • Racial Justice
    • Youth Activism
  • About Us
  • Log in
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Featured Articles
  • Webinars
    • Free Webinars
    • Premium On-Demand Webinars
  • Tiny Spark Podcast
  • Magazine
    • Magazine
    • Leading Edge Membership
Donate
Policy

Reviewing a Forgotten 1968 Federal Law Reminds Us of the Possibilities

Steve Dubb
September 17, 2018
Share9
Email
Tweet
Share
Yoichi Okamoto [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

September 5, 2018; Shelterforce

On August 1, 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed a bill that he declared “the most farsighted, the most comprehensive, the most massive housing program in all American history,” a bill that promised to ensure “the very precious American right to a roof over your head—a decent home.”

Johnson wasn’t talking about the Fair Housing Act, which had passed three months earlier—one week after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. What animated Johnson was the Housing and Urban Development Act of 1968. It was known at the time as “the housing act.” Writing in Shelterforce, Fred McGhee contends that this second bill, not the Fair Housing Act, was “the most important housing law passed in 1968.”

“This misremembering,” McGhee adds, “is not accidental—it reflects the race and class trajectory of America over the past five decades…had its promise been fulfilled, many of the problems beleaguering American cities today might have been avoided or at least mitigated.”

The 1968 housing act included a smorgasbord of housing ideas…[including] a robust increase in public housing construction. The act set a national goal of constructing or rehabilitating 26 million housing units, including six million for low- and moderate-income families.

In his signing statement, Johnson noted that, “Over the 10 years of this program, the production rate of federally subsidized housing will be 10 times higher than it has been in the last decade.”

The election of Richard Nixon three months later did not immediately end the housing program. McGhee notes that “the HUD secretary who presided over the single largest construction of federally subsidized housing in American history was George Romney, father of former Massachusetts governor and current Senate candidate from Utah Mitt Romney. American housing production between 1968 and 1972 was both robust and diverse.”

But, McGhee observes, “backed by white resistance to integration as well as overall hostility to government housing efforts,” Nixon rolled back the federal commitment later in his term. In its place, McGhee notes, America got “block grants and a new tenant-based voucher program known as Section 8. In other words, deregulation and delegation.” And, of course, further cutbacks occurred over time.

The impact is quite visible in the numbers. For example, a US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) report found that in 1970, the federal government developed 366,100 new units of affordable housing and financed the rehabilitation of an additional 79,700 units—numbers that were more than 10 times higher than the numbers reported for 1961. By comparison, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, according to an Urban Institute report published two months ago, has created or preserved 2.3 million housing units in its first 30 years—an amount that works out to less than 77,000 units a year, barely one-sixth of the 1970 affordable housing production level.

Today, McGhee notes, “even the thought of direct federal provision of affordable housing is nearly unimaginable.” And so, as NPQ has noted, we are left with the inefficient system of tax credits that we have today and even those limited supports regularly face threats of cutbacks.

As McGhee observes, the result of this turn is that millions lack affordable housing today. In his home town of Austin, Texas, McGhee reports that about 10,000 families are on the waiting list for public housing, adding that “The waiting list is perpetually closed, so the actual number [lacking needed housing] is even higher.”

McGhee notes that to rely on the private real estate market on its own to provide safe, decent, and truly affordable housing for low-income families is to expect the impossible. As Emily Badger explained a couple of years ago in the Washington Post, the cost of providing the housing is simply more than people with limited incomes can afford to pay. And that means we have to acknowledge that whether the policy employed involves government subsidies or direct provision, only the public sector can make housing for all a reality.—Steve Dubb

Share9
Email
Tweet
Share

About The Author
Steve Dubb

Steve Dubb is a senior editor at NPQ, where he directs NPQ’s economic justice program, including NPQ’s Economy Remix column. Steve has worked with cooperatives and nonprofits for over two decades, including twelve years at The Democracy Collaborative and three years as executive director of NASCO (North American Students of Cooperation). In his work, Steve has authored, co-authored and edited numerous reports; participated in and facilitated learning cohorts; designed community building strategies; and helped build the field of community wealth building. Steve is the lead author of Building Wealth: The Asset-Based Approach to Solving Social and Economic Problems (Aspen 2005) and coauthor (with Rita Hodges) of The Road Half Traveled: University Engagement at a Crossroads, published by MSU Press in 2012. In 2016, Steve curated and authored Conversations on Community Wealth Building, a collection of interviews of community builders that Steve had conducted over the previous decade.

Related
The Vanishing Voter: How Did Low Turnout US Elections Become the Norm?
By Steve Dubb
November 10, 2020
State Report Calls on Virginia to Overhaul Its K-12 Black History Curriculum
By Steve Dubb
September 2, 2020
U of Virginia Pays Homage to the 4,000 Enslaved People who Built the Campus
By Steve Dubb
August 19, 2020
Open-Air Exhibit Features Hopeful Stories for Trying Times
By Carole Levine
August 17, 2020
Hiroshima at 75: Lessons for Today
By Steve Dubb and Gar Alperovitz
August 6, 2020
Will the Nation Reckon with Andrew Jackson’s Enduring Racist Legacy?
By Beth Couch
June 29, 2020

Upcoming Webinars

Group Created with Sketch.
January 21, 2 pm ET

Remaking the Economy

Health, Racial Disparities, and Economic Justice

other posts by The Author
Out of View, Exiting Administration Wields Its Axe at the...
By Steve Dubb
January 15, 2021
Feds Fix Some PPP Flaws but Ignore Old Shortcomings
By Steve Dubb
January 13, 2021
The Long Road to Cultural Representation: Two New...
By Steve Dubb
January 12, 2021
CYNDI SUAREZ
The Nonprofit Racial Leadership Gap: Flipping the Lens
Powerful Interests Seek to Make Puerto Rico the Hong Kong of the...
Moving Beyond the Privilege of White Tears
logo
Donate
  • About