The Federal Government and Urban Housing

Book excerpt: The Federal Government and Urban Housing provides a comprehensive overview of federal housing and community development policy during the last fifty years, with special emphasis on the crucial decade of the 1970s. It relates housing policy developments to broad ideological and political changes that have taken place in the U. S. during this period. R. Allen Hays covers virtually every major program that has attempted to provide housing for disadvantaged persons, including public housing, Section 235, Section 8, and housing rehabilitation. He compares the underlying approaches to housing embodied in these programs, and examines the impact of urban renewal and Community Development Block Grants on urban housing. The successes and failures of federal housing programs are considered within a detailed historical context. The book concludes with a look at housing policy under the Ronald Reagan Administration and a discussion of the future of housing policy.