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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…
February 27, 2025
How Progressive Policy Distorted the Housing Market
For more than a century, American progressives have argued that the costs and conditions of American housing prove that the private market has failed. In the early twentieth century, the often-rough tenements of New York’s Lower East Side were deemed the work of rapacious “slumlords,” while small single-family or duplex homes that sprouted in cities…
February 7, 2025
Follow Elon Musk’s USAID Model to Free Tenants from Public-Housing Hell
The willingness of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency to take on sacred cows is stunning Washington, as tenets long unquestioned suddenly fall like idols destroyed by Abraham. The same creative destruction should be focused on a bad idea that has harmed cities and fostered dependency for nearly a century: public housing. Instead of tinkering…
December 29, 2024
Why Rent Regulation Remains So Hard to Undo in NYC
Few would argue that New York City is mired in a housing crisis — as defined by high prices and low vacancies. There’s good evidence for that conclusion. The most recent federal New York City Housing and Vacancy Survey reported a vacancy rate of just 1.4%, “a stark contrast to the 4.54 rate in 2021”. Over the same period,…
October 15, 2024
Lefty NYC Council Add-Ons to Mayor’s ‘City of Yes’ Would Worse Housing Crisis
Eric Adams’ chance for a lasting legacy hinges on his ambitious zoning and housing proposal dubbed “City of Yes” — poised to come before the City Council next week. But as some community groups seek to derail the plan, the hard-left council looks ready to undermine it — and convert it to the “City of Yes, But.” The key to Adams’…