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March 10, 2026
Don’t Tax the Public Housing Poor Like They’re Rich
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed the most dramatic low-income housing policy change in decades, potentially affecting the more than 5 million tenants in public and voucher-subsidized housing. The new proposed regulation, announced on March 6, would permit local housing authorities to adopt both time limits and work requirements for these tenants, who are among…
February 13, 2026
What Harvard’s Raj Chetty Overlooks About Upward Mobility
The Harvard economist Raj Chetty, justly famous for his studies of the factors that enable upward mobility in America, is back with a new analysis that has attracted wide attention. Thanks to access to the individual tax records of a million former public housing residents whom his Opportunity Insights team tracked, he determined that a move from “the projects” to a…
January 22, 2026
Democrats Face Stark Choice on Housing Affordability
Affordability, especially lowering housing costs, enjoys bipartisan political support — at least in theory. But affordability is a goal, not a specific program, and even progressive Democrats can break with each other on how to achieve it. That’s the lesson learned from New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s recent housing proposal, one that sets the relatively moderate Democrat…
November 19, 2025
Real Estate Red Flag: How Hidden Blue-State Policies are Pricing Out Homeowners
A telling new analysis of rising home maintenance costs from the real estate listing service Zillow, in conjunction with Thumbtack, which tracks the cost of local services, should remind those promoting the virtues of homeownership that it’s key for new buyers to be prepared and capable owners. At the same time, the findings tell yet another story…
September 25, 2025
The Golden Age of Public Housing—and Why It Didn’t Last
If Americans have any shared image of public housing, it is one of dilapidated and even dangerous “projects” and locations of concentrated poverty. But there was a time—a brief shining moment—in which public housing was new and attractive and working married couples with children were glad to live in government-owned and -managed apartments. What might…
September 24, 2025
Subsidized Housing and Upward Mobility
In 1983, Harvard scholars Mary Jo Bane and David Ellwood sought to determine the length of time participants in Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) spent in the program. Their report, titled The Dynamics of Dependence, revealed that the average participant could be expected to remain in AFDC for 10 years — a figure that increased to…
September 8, 2025
A Hidden Explanation for the Wealth Gap on Racial Lines That Emerges in the Push to Promote Public Housing
We hear a great deal about what’s called the black-white wealth gap. It’s not an inaccurate phrase. According to the latest data from the Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, the “racial wealth gap” stands at $240,120 — the difference between the assets of the median white and median black household. Median white assets are $285,000;…
May 10, 2025
How Single Room Occupancies Could Be the Answer to NYC’s Housing Crisis
It was another local tragedy attracting passing notice before being overtaken for our attention by the latest stray bullet homicides and subway assaults. But those concerned with “affordable housing” have much to learn from the Easter morning deaths of three Queens residents and the displacement of perhaps a dozen others in a fire in an…
March 17, 2025
Trump Should Put an End to Rent Control
We are in a time when what would have seemed to be unimaginable domestic policy changes — from the abolition of the Department of Education to cutoffs of federal support for universities — are on the table. The Department of Housing and Urban Development is involved in this creative destruction — having pulled back a Biden-era program called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, which tied federal assistance for…
February 28, 2025
Trump Stopped Biden’s Plan to Force DEI on Local Communities
The pullback from diversity, equity and inclusion programs — in government agencies and business — has focused on their impact at the individual level — on hiring, or college admission. But an under-the-radar initiative of the Biden administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development planned DEI for communities across the country. It would do so through required “equity…